


til I drown in your hands

by delsicle



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 17:02:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5172209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delsicle/pseuds/delsicle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry hasn’t been to Liam’s childhood home in two years. None of his friends have. And judging from the diplomatic and painfully polite e-mail he received three weeks ago, stating simply that the house is going to be sold any day now, none of them will ever be back again.</p><p>So a weekend was carved out, a visit was planned, and now, here he is, in Niall’s shotgun seat, about to end a tradition that stretched back to their teenage years.</p><p>Or, the AU in which Liam has a house to sell (and issues to sort out), Zayn is just trying to keep it together, Niall wants everyone to get along, Louis is flirty, and Harry has been in love with Louis for eight years.</p>
            </blockquote>





	til I drown in your hands

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this is a bit random for me, but, these two haven't been leaving my thoughts lately and I felt the need to write it out. 
> 
> This story is based on the movie Seven And A Match, if you're interested, look it up, it's a gem.
> 
> Typical RPF disclaimers: This is an AU and work of fiction, I don't personally know the boys, etc. 
> 
> There were a lotttttt of errors when I originally posted this (like, entire paragraphs randomly missing and other delights). Most of it should be fixed now, but, if there's anything weird, let me know and I'll get on it. 
> 
> Alright, that's out of the way. Enjoy and happy MITAM week!

This is what madness feels like.

 

Harry has always thought he knew what it felt like to go insane. Late-night writing sessions, white office walls, and noisy neighbors paired with thin flat walls will do that to a person. But no. Real madness is sitting still for four hours, in a car that reeks of fast food grease and gasoline, listening to the brassy pipes of Irish folk music, with no escape in sight.

 

He tilts his head enough that the sunlight briefly blinds him before he can clearly make out the sharp, pale outline of Niall’s hair, the lazy shape of his fingers as he drives one-handed. Harry recognizes the glazed look in his eyes, meaning Niall’s probably mentally in the back of a pub back in Ireland and not focusing on steering them down a twisty one-lane road.

 

“Ni,” he says, reaching over to jostle his friend’s shoulder, “Ni, turn that down, please,”

 

“What?” Niall blinks and turns his head to look at Harry’s hand on his arm, then shrugs it away, “The music? It botherin’ you?”

 

Harry closes his eyes and winces as another song starts up, nearly identical to the last forty he’s just heard, “A little,” 

 

“Ah, just do some of your meditation breaths,” he replies, slapping Harry on the arm and then reaching over to turn the radio volume up louder, “It’s the last-ever Casa Payno weekend! Get in the spirit!”

 

Harry groans and tilts his head back, examining the ragged slit in the fabric lining of the car ceiling, “You’re lucky I don’t have a car,”

 

“And you’re lucky I only live an hour away from you or you’d be stranded,”

 

“Right, of course,”

 

He doesn’t say the unspoken truth, though: come hell or high water, a puzzle of bus rides or not, he would’ve ended up here with or without Niall’s help. Without anyone’s help, really.

 

Harry hasn’t been to Liam’s childhood home in two years. None of his friends have. And judging from the diplomatic and painfully polite e-mail he received three weeks ago, stating simply that the house is going to get sold any day now, none of them will ever be back again.

 

So a weekend was carved out, a visit was planned, and now, here he is, in Niall’s shotgun seat, about to end a tradition that stretched back to their teenage years.

 

He watches the pale, bare trees whirl by, second-guessing which bend would eventually lead them to the end, and then the road opens up, and he feels his heart skip the same moment Niall shuts off the radio and lets out a small, reverent breath.

 

“Ah,” Niall breaths, planting his hand on the steering wheel and giving the horn a few short jabs, “And here we are,”

 

Through the barren trees are the first hints of what can only be called a mansion; a massive hunk of cool gray stone, pale wood, and sharp angles cutting through the clearing like a cruise liner in a barren, colorless ocean. As Niall pulls in around the bend, the soft mid-November sunlight catches against the glass of the brass-trimmed windows, making the whole structure shimmer for a moment until they get closer and the light moves out of its prime angle.

 

Harry has to hand it to Liam; he assumed this place would be falling apart when he heard the news, but from the outside, the house is still impressive, even with the weathered For Sale sign stuck in the front yard.

 

There’s only a heartbeat between when Niall cuts off the gurgling engine and the front door swings open. As it bangs closed, Harry leans forward to see Liam walking out on the porch, his hands shoved into his well-worn shearling jacket, the cold autumn wind staining his ears a livid pink. He removes one hand from his pocket and waves as he strides across the porch, and Harry opens his door in time to hear his voice.

 

“Hey, guys,” Liam calls as he descends the front steps, his boots crunching the gravel driveway, “Good to see ya,”

 

“You too, Li,” Harry says, wrapping his friend in a hug when he gets to the car, “S’good to be back. Been too long,”

 

“I know. Two fuckin’ years,” Liam pulls away and shakes his head, “Wish we would have known what was going to happen…we could’ve milked the old days for all they were worth,”

 

“Well that’s such fuckin’ morbid, innit?” Niall calls, white air puffing out of his lips as he hauls their suitcases out of the backseat and circles around, “Bad enough you have us spend a weekend thinking about you’re losing the place for good, you wanna stretch that out for eight years?”

 

Liam just sighs, “You’re right as usual, Nialler,”

 

“I know,” Niall grins and drops both suitcases as he goes to hug Liam, Harry’s bag dropping with a loud, crunching impact on the gravel.

 

“Hey, c’mon,” Harry scolds him, chasing after the bag, “My laptop’s in here, you bastard. That’s my fuckin’ livelihood,”

 

“Ah, right, sorry,” Niall pulls away from his hug entirely too fast and goes to right the bag, only to knock it over again with a louder crunch, “Ah, shit…”

 

“For God’s sake,” Liam groans and swoops in, picking up the both bags and hefting them off the ground, “Just come inside already, fuckin’ freezing out here,”

 

“Yeah, alright,” Niall shoves his hands into his coat and ducks his head, falling alongside Harry as they trudge behind Liam up to the porch and then past the front door.

 

The air inside is thick with the smell of department store candles and wood varnish, just like it always is. Harry feels his stomach swoop as he walks in, like he’s eight years younger and a solid four inches shorter, stepping inside this front hallway for the first time and just… _knowing_ this is an incredible place.

 

He stands rooted in the doorway, hands buried deep in the felt pockets of his coat, as Niall jogs ahead, a grin splitting his face as he approaches the end of the hallway, breathing, “It’s all the same…good Lord…”

 

Liam sets down their bags by the empty umbrella rack in the front hall and then reaches out a hand to grab Niall by his elbow before he could get inside the living room.

 

“You know the rules, coats and boots at the door,” he chides, “I’ll get you boys something to drink, hang tight,”

 

Liam disappears through the doorway, and Niall quickly whips off his jacket and pulls off his shoes, leaving them in a haphazard pile in the entryway. Harry groans, shaking his head as he scoops up his friend’s clothes, then sets his own boots in a neat pile by the door and puts his coat on a hook before following the sound of Niall’s ecstatic cheers into the living room.

 

“Will you look at the place!” Niall shouts, his arms open wide as he spins in a circle. Harry tilts his head, his chest seizing as he takes in the high ceilings, the gleaming hardwood floors, the stone fireplace, the rich blue stained glass that line the edges of the windows overlooking the woods. Despite everything that’s happened, it’s still so beautiful, like a perfectly preserved photograph pulled out of the rubble of a natural disaster.

 

“And the best part is,” Niall whoops, finally come to a stop in his spinning, “We beat all those other bastards here!”

 

“Afraid not, Horan,”

 

Both of them jump at the voice and look up to the staircase. At the very top, a slight figure stands with one elbow leaning on the handrail, two long hands wrapped around a mug. His inky sweater and jeans practically disappear into late afternoons shadows behind him, the one speck of color on his form coming from the thick yellow headband that holds back the long, dark waves of his hair. He steps down, moving out of the darkness, and smiles, raising his mug and giving them a clear view of the cartoon moose stamped in the ceramic, “That title goes to me this time,”

 

“Holy shit, a wild Malik appears,” Harry laughs as Zayn dips his head in a mock bow and descends the steps to greet him.

 

“And right in the middle of my victory speech, too,” Niall mumbles, crossing his arms.

 

“Ah, sorry for that, Ni,” Zayn chuckles, swooping in to give the other man a hug, “Good to see you, boys,”

 

“You, too,’ Harry says as Zayn moves over to embrace him, “Didn’t think you were here yet, you know. We didn’t see your car out front,”

 

Zayn shrugs, bringing his mug up to his mouth, “S’in the garage. Privileges of getting here first and all,”

 

“Shh,” Harry warns, clapping his hands over Niall’s ears, “Don’t rub it in too much with this one. Went mad trying to draw up the fastest route here,”

 

“Did _not_ ,” Niall protests, ducking to get away from Harry.

 

“You did so. You kept texting me live updates. And then one time you called me when you found a shortcut that trimmed down twenty minutes. I think you were crying,”

 

“Enough! I was excited!” Niall throws up his hands, “Is that so bad?”

 

“’Course not, Nialler,” Liam says, emerging from the kitchen with two mismatched mugs in his hands, “Now, here,”

 

He pushes the mugs towards his friends, their surfaces billowing with steam and the thick, spiced smell of apples. Niall takes one and his shoulders immediately drop a few inches as he sighs contentedly.

 

 “God, look at this, cider and everything. You’ve still got it, mate,”

 

Liam just scoffs, “I’m broke, not a savage,”

 

“Right,” Harry chokes out, griping his mug tighter and quickly taking an overly sweet sip, “Of course not,”

 

It still felt strange to think to Liam of anything other than the heir to one of the UK’s wealthiest families, never worrying about anything other than whether he should attend law school at Oxford or Cambridge and which color napkins he should order for his parent’s next gathering.

 

Then, one night, thanks to a drunk London taxi driver, Liam had been left with no parents, a mountain of debt he had never known about, and an unsellable house.

 

Yeah. A year and a half later and none of it seemed real, not even when their visits came to a grinding halt because Liam’s life was falling apart. Yet here they were, standing in the shockingly intact ruins of an empire. 

 

“Well,” Liam finally says, throwing on a smile despite his previously bitter joke, “you boys know where your rooms are if you want to go on up. I can get your bags for you…”

 

“Don’t worry about it,” Harry cuts in quickly, already setting his mug down on the coffee table, “I’ll get mine. Niall?”

 

“I’ll go up later,” Niall sighs, flapping his hand and taking a long pull of his cider, “Don’t feel like carrying that thing right now,”

 

Harry shrugs, already heading back towards the hallway, “Your fault for packing heavy,”

 

“Shut your damn mouth, I need a lot of layers!”

 

Harry snorts, shaking his head as he retrieves his bag and vaults up the stairs, two at a time, into the main hallway above.

 

At the top balcony, he turns right, where all the guest rooms are separated from the Payne’s private rooms, and follows the familiar path all the way down to the small white door at the very end of the hall. He grasps the doorknob, briefly running his thumb over the spot where he’d carved his initials into the wood nine years ago, and then finally gives the knob a jiggle and a firm twist.

 

Going inside almost makes his heart stop again.

 

The room itself isn’t much, to be honest, just an almost-too-small-bed, a chest of drawers, a couple small bookshelves, and a desk all made of the same pale golden wood. There’s a tiny closet tucked into the corner and an ancient armchair right next to the dresser, and a neat stack of pale blue towels folded on the bed’s quilted top. Compared to the four-poster beds and enormous walk-in closets in the rooms the other rooms, it was humble at best.

 

But Harry had never wanted to stay anywhere else.

 

He’d claimed it eight years ago, because back then it seemed like the kind of places where real writers would stay. There were shelves lined with old-looking books with pretentious and unfamiliar titles, a desk shoved up against a wide, circular window, and covering everything was the permanent smell of the forest, dead leaves and softly rotting wood. It had made his fingers itch with the undeniable, thick feeling of potential, is if simply by existing here, he could be great, too.

 

Nobody could say he hadn’t tried to get there. He’d spent a lot of late nights sitting at that desk with a journal, then later his computer, even briefly an old typewriter the boys are given him for Christmas, staring out across the darkened woods, listening to the muffled sounds of music or his friends coming from downstairs. Sometimes he would wear them in the hall, speaking through barely concealed laughter and drunk, slurring accents.

 

“No, don’t knock, he’s working,”

 

“Yeah, mate, Styles is writin’ the Great American Novel, leave ‘im be,”

 

“We haven’t seen him for the last four nights, I say let him out. And we’re not even fuckin’ Americans, for Christ’s sake,”

 

“Just leave it, leave it,”

 

The words were always the same, and they ended with a scuffling noise down the hall, occasionally a loud shout suggesting they go drink _outside_ because wouldn’t that be wild.

 

He would always shake his head, then look down at his half-filled page of scribbled—or typed—nonsense, and quickly turn in, trying to convince himself he was actually creating something worthwhile, that this would all turn into something bigger, and that he wasn’t abandoning his friends for no good reason.

 

Now, he wants to go back, drag his past self down the stairs by his too-long hair, and force him to enjoy this place while there was still time.

 

He shakes the memories away just so they can’t drag him down too much, and busies himself unpacking his suitcase. There’s not much to unpack, really: his laptop, an array of chargers, a couple jumpers and jeans, extra boots, toiletry bag. He could leave it all in his bag if he wanted to, but there’s something comforting about having his boots lined up by the door, his jacket hanging in the otherwise empty closet, his shirts folded in the drawers and his laptop sitting alertly on the desk. Like everything here is a lot less temporary than it really is. Like he’s home.

 

He’s just plugging his phone in to charge when the sound of crunching gravel, mixed with a few short, loud jabs of a car horn, makes him lift his head and look out the window. He’s greeted with the sight of a deep blue car rolling smoothly into the driveway. It’s beautiful and painfully new up against Niall’s outdated model, and the sunlight hitting off the gleaming bumpers actually makes Harry blink against the glare.

 

Another car. There’s only one person it can be.

 

He turns away before he could see the door open, but it appears that the others had already caught on to the new arrival.

 

“Lou’s here!” he can hear Niall calling from downstairs, “Lou—Harry! Harry, come down, Louis’s here!”

 

He doesn’t even have time to call back before he hears a door open, a scuffle of shoes from down below, and a short, loud, “Oi!”.

 

On auto-pilot, he pushes himself away from the wall and goes over to the door. He takes one step into the hall and could already hear that high, lilting accent, the way his laugh rises above the sound of the other men and fills the air up to the brim. Harry’s steps quicken, his feet sliding across the carpet as he makes it to the stairs.

 

When he’s at the top, he pauses, wrapping one hand firmly against the worn wooden handrail, gazing down at the sight of his friends standing in a loose, animated circle in the living room, all eyes turned to their latest and final addition.

 

Louis has already claimed his place as their center of attention, like he always does. There’s almost no obvious changes in the way he looks, aside from a few more lines by his eyes. He’s dressed in a thick green sweater that hangs loose off his shoulders, a tawny brown coat is thrown over his arm, and there are a few carefully planned pieces of hair falling out of place over his forehead. His toes are pressed into the floor and his heels rise the smallest amount off the ground, his eyes wide and his mouth moving quickly as he speaks, but all the individual words blur in Harry’s ears as he opens his mouth to speak.

 

“Hi, Lou,”

 

He knows he said it too loudly and winces as everyone’s heads turn. Louis blinks, then smiles, walking to the very bottom of the stairs, resting a hand on the curved end of the handrail.

 

“Jesus, Haz, hey,” he laughs, “Good to see ya,”

 

“You too,”

 

“Lord, look at you,” Louis shakes his head and raises a hand, curling his fingers towards himself, “C’mon down, then, lemme get a closer look,”

 

Harry lets his hand fall away from the railing and he steps down until both feet are pressed on the hardwood and Louis was right in front of him, his eyes flicked upward and his tongue caught between his teeth.

 

“You cut your hair,” he observes after a minute.

 

“Yeah. Sometimes that happens after two years,”

 

“I like it. Brings out those cheekbones,” Louis lifts his hand and softly slaps Harry’s cheek, then moves his hand down to grips his chin between his fingers, “God, Hazza. He’s as dashing as ever, eh, lads?” 

 

There’s a dead beat of silence behind them before Zayn mumbles, “You two need to get a fuckin’ room and leave us out of this,” which of course makes Louis do that sharp, high giggle that makes some sort of violent chemical reaction go off in Harry’s chest.

 

Louis’s hand falls away, but it’s only another moment before his arms are wrapped around Harry’s shoulders, his whole weight leaning into him, and Harry fumbles before his arms get their shit together and clasp themselves around Louis.

 

“Ah, I missed you the most,” Louis chuckles into Harry’s shoulder, “Don’t tell the others,”

 

“Right,” Harry replies, “Of course not,”

 

Then, his arms release their grip and the moment’s over. Harry blinks and stumbles back, as if someone’s shoved him.

 

“Hey, it’s getting to be almost dinner. I can cook something or order in, what sounds good?” Liam says, and Harry realizes with relief no one saw him almost crumple over one hug.

 

 “Ah, take-out’s fine, don’t worry yourself,” Louis immediately replies, and the rest of them murmur in agreement before launching into a full-scale debate of what region of the world they wanted to sample that night.

 

But Harry can barely listen, because Louis keeps snagging on his peripheral vision, and that feeling in his stomach keeps rolling like ocean waves, familiar and unwelcome.

 

The thing is, he and Louis weren’t meant to be friends. Eight years ago, one of them was their school’s football captain and the other was a wallflower best known for carrying around books no one cared about and openly liking boys. Without Liam, they never would’ve spoken to each other. They barely even interacted their first weekend together.

 

And yet at some point, Harry had made a joke, a joke he didn’t even remember the punch line to, and Louis burst out laughing and slung his arm around him, declaring, “I think I like this one,” and that was that. They were friends. Best friends, really.

 

But Harry always felt like there were edges to their friendship, lines and strings attached that he didn’t have with the rest of the group. Because when he was sixteen, he was fixated with Louis, who even then, with his bad haircut and skinny body and loud voice, was beautiful. And then that fixation had turned into a very real crush for the next six years. In fact, the last time he had left this house, he did it with a swollen heart and tears in his eyes as he viciously waved good-bye to Louis from the shotgun seat of Zayn’s car, like he always did, while Zayn just shook his head from the driver’s seat.

 

“Calm down, Styles. He’ll think you’re in love with him if you keep going like that,”

 

Zayn hadn’t known he was right. Harry sometimes thought he _was_ in love with Louis.

 

It wasn’t Louis’s fault; he probably never even knew. It just didn’t help that he was a big fan of touching and sexual innuendos, and he did it a lot. Hugs, hand holding, pet names, the occasional drunk grope. Most of it was just between them, and that always made Harry feel like it felt something, like it was more than just a joke. But he could never point it out, could never make it weird.

 

After awhile, he accepted it. Being flirty was engrained into Louis’s personality, just like football and sarcasm and loving girls.

 

The last thought is a bitter footnote that never fails to work itself into Harry’s brain, even now.

 

Even after two years apart. Even after Harry went to London full-time to be a writer and Louis went to Oxford to become a true starving artist and work on acting, and they barely interacted outside of the Internet because life got in the way too much.

 

Even after Harry had started dating again and spent too many mornings wishing he was waking up to blue eyes and a Yorkshire accent in his ear.

 

Even after they grew up, he can’t shake this stupid, hopeless crush.

 

“Harry?” a voice, Liam’s, snaps him out of his haze, “What do you want? Indian? Chinese? Pizza?”

 

“Say Chinese,” Niall cuts in, and Zayn bumps him in the side with his elbow.

 

“Be quiet,” Liam scolds, “Harry, what do you want?”

 

Harry blinks and turns, and just his luck his eyes catch on Louis.

 

“Oh,” he shrugs, tearing his eyes away, “I don’t care,”

 

\----------------------------------------------------

An hour and a half and an overly long debate on what to order later, the kitchen air is thick with the smell of grease and sweet and sour sauce, and the counter is cluttered by white and red boxes, sauce packets, and random stacks of napkins. Louis and Niall keep slapping each other’s hands away from boxes of sticky rice and battered shrimp as they move along the row of Chinese takeout options. Zayn moves cautiously behind them, scooping up the vegetarian dishes the other two pass by, while Harry, with his already loaded plate, stays out of the fray entirely, instead busying himself with finding a bottle opener in one of the drawers as he suppresses a smile at how right it all feels.

 

Liam just stands off to the side, a hand pressed to his cheek as he watches his friends fill their plates and glasses, waving off his help.

 

“I’m sorry about all this again. I promise I’ll make something decent the rest of the weekend,” he apologizes, “I have some meals planned out, if you want anything different, though, I can run into town— “

 

“Liam,” Zayn sighs, shaking his head and resting a hand on Liam’s shoulder, “It’s great, just calm down,”

 

“Yeah, Li, it’s perfect,” Harry pitches in. He finally finds the silver bottle opener and goes to work pulling the cork out of a bottle of burgundy so he could fill his glass. It feels strange, pouring out this bottle that easily could’ve cost two hundred pounds, just to drink alongside some cheap sesame chicken. But Liam had practically thrust it into his hands a few minutes ago, rambling on about how his mother’s collection of wine wasn’t really a valuable selling point anymore, and Harry could drink whatever he wanted, take home a few bottles, too.

 

Harry wonders if it ever got exhausting being so generous.

 

“Boys, c’mon,” Zayn chides, pushing Niall’s back as he attempts to create a small mountain of lo mien noodles on his already overly full plate, “Leave some food for our host,”

 

“Oh, no, it’s fine, they can take as much as they want,”

 

“Not to the point of you fucking starving. Come on, then,” Zayn finally succeeds in getting Niall and Louis out of the line and Liam shoots him a soft, appreciative look as he collects a plate of his own and goes in for what’s left.

 

Harry knows from experience that this kitchen is big enough to fit a small army of chefs and have room to spare, but it’s starting to feel crowded, somehow, with all the voices and movement, so he picks up his plate and glass and heads towards the dining room. It’s a short trip, just to a set of French doors in the corner of the kitchen, and as soon as he throws them open he closes his eyes, breathing in the clean, crisp night air that’s leaking through the array of windows in the room.

 

But when he opens his eyes again, he frowns. The long, extravagant, dining room table is gone. In its place is only pristinely polished wood, marred slightly by the empty, pale scars where the legs of the table and a dozen chairs used to sit.

 

“Li,” Harry calls over his shoulder, “Where’s your table?”

 

“What?” the voice that replies isn’t Liam’s, but Niall, and he soon appears in the doorway with Louis nipping at his heels, both of their eyes wide, “Christ, mate, what happened?”

 

“Ah,” Liam’s strained voice wavers in the air and then he and Zayn appear in the doorway. Liam scratches the back of his head nervously as he speaks, “That’s…sold it. A couple months ago,”

 

“Oh,” Harry says dumbly, balancing his plate and wine glass between his hands, “Did you,”

 

“Yeah. Couple of antique collectors from town were willin’ to give me a lot for it, and, well, it was too big to fit in my flat anyways, so,” he half-shrugs, as if that table hadn’t been passed down his family for four generations and seated a dozen politicians, half of the film industry, and a few literary geniuses over the years, “But the old folding thing’s down in the basement, I think that should work fine. I can go get it,”

 

Liam turns to go back into the main part of the house but Zayn catches his arm and squeezes his bicep, grounding him in the doorway.

 

“Hey, don’t worry about it, Li. We can eat in the living room, yeah? Don’t have to worry about lugging that thing up the stairs just yet,”

 

“Yeah, living room’s great,” Niall breaks in, “It’ll be like the week the Cup was going on while we were here and Tommo couldn’t tear himself away from the games long enough to eat at the table--“

 

“—so you all just starting eating in there with me. Remember that, yeah,” Louis laughs, “I think I nearly broke a coffee table that week, didn’t I?”

 

“Flipped it over,” Harry mumbles, and brushes the hair from his face as Louis glances over at him, “Broke half a dozen of those really nice glasses, too. I stayed up til one, helped you pick up all the pieces,”

 

“Ah,” Louis nods, “Sounds about right,”

 

Harry glances down at his hands and can practically feel the tiny glass shards huddled in his palms, feel the tightness in his knees from being bent on the floor for too long.

 

He can even hear Louis’s soft, slurred voice across the room, “You’re not getting’ cut, Haz? Must be those nimble fingers...”

 

“Harry, come on, we’re moving!” Niall’s voice brings him back to the present and he sways on the balls of his feet, clamping down on his glass as he feels it almost sip through his fingers.

 

“Right,” he breathes, “Sorry,”

 

Niall doesn’t say anything; he’s already moving back into the kitchen with the rest of the pack. But Harry can’t move. He keeps staring at those pale marks in the wood, and wonders why he cares so much about a stupid table that wasn’t even his.

 

Maybe it’s because he keeps picturing the late nights at that table, the card games and the bowls of gelato and the one night they all piled into one chair to hug Liam the night his girlfriend of a year and a half had dumped him at eleven at night over a twenty-second phone call.

 

Maybe it’s because everything else has changed, but this house isn’t supposed to. This house and everything in it is supposed to be steadfast.

 

Harry turns quickly and retreats to safety, to the light of the living room and the voices of his friends. He shakes his head, trying to physically clear these thoughts from his head.

 

Not even a few hours here and this place was already haunting him.

\------------------------------------------

 

“Li, mate, you trying to burn the wood or the whole fuckin’ house down?”

 

Liam glances up, his sweaty face barely visible in the far-off glow of the back porch lights, and gives Louis one long, vaguely murderous look before tossing another wave of lighter fluid onto the pile of wood in front of him.

 

A bonfire had apparently not been an activity Liam had prepared for. But after dinner was over and a stack of unwashed, greasy plates was stacked into the sink, Niall had brought up the fire pit that was still sitting out in the backyard, which somehow led to them setting up a circle of folding canvas chairs outside as Liam filled the pit with piece after piece of machine-cut firewood and then doused it in enough kerosene to cause a reasonable amount of concern.

 

“Alright, there,” Liam announces, screwing the cap back on the bottle of fluid, “I think we’re ready,”

 

Zayn tosses him a paper booklet of matches, and after a few failed attempts, Liam drops one cautious flame into the wood and the whole thing erupts in crackling fire. He laughs and claps, practically falling back into his chair and swiping an arm over his sweaty forehead.

 

“Thanks for doing this, Li,” Niall sighs, slouching in his chair as he watched the flames, “I remember we had one of these our first weekend here,”

 

“Right, it was the last night, before you all went home,” Liam agrees, “I promised you were all welcome back, but I didn’t think any of you would actually take me up on that,”

 

“None of you were supposed to be here that first time, anyways,” Niall laughs, pointing to the rest of the circle, “Li just invited me, said we could use the woods to shoot some scenes for our Film class project,”

 

“Right, and then Zayn overheard us talking about it in the courtyard and decided he needed another art project to fill his time,”

 

“You bastards were lucky,” Zayn says, “I set up all the best camera angles for you,”

 

“We still got a B,”

 

“Well, your instructor didn’t understand art for shit,”

 

“I just came because I had that camera, didn’t I?” Harry cuts in.

 

Niall bobs his head in agreement, “We did use your camera, didn’t we?”

 

“Yeah, well, you lived across the street, so I already knew you, but…I don’t think we’d talked before. I was shaking when you asked me to spend the weekend, actually,”

 

“I remember that!” Niall hoots, “Oh my God, you were so cute, I think you thought we were gonna force you to do drugs or something the whole time,”

 

“Thank God that was before Zayn and Louis got into that shit, I never would’ve come back otherwise,”

 

“Wait, how did you end up here, Lou? I forget,” Niall asks. Louis glances over at him, lacing and unlacing his fingers together in his lap, and then shrugs.

 

“I heard there was a party and I invited meself,”

 

Liam shakes his head, “Lame party that must’ve been,”

 

“Of course it was. We spent three days running around a fuckin’ field and filming trees. And you were too afraid to get into your dad’s booze cabinet back then,” Louis sighs, “But somehow, I wanted to come back,”

 

“We all did, apparently,”

 

“Thank God,”

 

Their voices die away then, as if they’re all coming to the realization that it’s really been ten years since that weekend, but the silence doesn’t exactly last long. It never does.

.

“Niall,” Liam says, “Tell me, how is it that you’ve been here for a full six hours already and you haven’t even made a grab for Daisy yet?”

 

Niall immediately lifts his head from its reclined star-gazing position and he just stares at Liam, his eyes wide.

 

“You—she’s still here? You didn’t sell her?”

 

Liam just snorted, “You think I would do that to you? She’s back in the music room, where she always is,”

 

“Oh shit—oh shit, one second!” he stands up so suddenly that he rocks unsteadily on his feet for a beat before racing into the house, his pounding footsteps still audible once he’s inside.

 

Harry shakes his head, looking back at the house, “You’ve made his whole year, Payno,”

 

“I know,” Liam agrees, “Remember how his parents got him a much nicer guitar for Christmas, and he’d still say Daisy was his favorite?”

 

Louis snorts, “Are we still ignoring the fact that he named an instrument that wasn’t even his after a girl he fancied in year five?”

 

There’s not even time to reply before Niall is bursting out onto the porch, particularly sprinting back to his chair with the neck of a guitar gripped in his hand. He settles back into his chair, gazing at it with bright eyes as he plays with the strings.

 

At one point, the acoustic guitar had been destined to be forgotten, an ill-fitted birthday present that a young Liam had picked up twice and then left to gather dust next to his mother’s baby grand. That was, of course, until a seventeen-year-old Niall Horan had opened the wrong door looking for a bathroom and fallen madly in love with what he found.

 

“The tuning of this thing has gone to shit,” he grumbles, stroking the neck of the instrument, “Honestly, what kind of monster would let such a thing happen to you?”

 

“Are you still trying to seduce a fuckin’ guitar, Horan?” Louis chuckles, then cackles louder when Niall lifts his head with narrowed eyes, slowly shaking his head before going back to the strings.

 

After a minute, he strums it, the sound coming off clear and beautiful, and he hoots, punching a fist in the air.

 

“Oh, praise, she’s not a lost cause!” he declares, then shifts his fingers into proper position and half-whispers, half-sings under his breath, “Now that’s she back in the atmosphere…”

 

“Drops of her Jupiter in her hair…” Zayn answers softly, nodding his head, “Good choice, Nialler,”

 

“I know,” he says proudly, jabbing a finger at Harry, “See, Styles? I have _fantastic_ taste in music,”

 

“Don’t exactly remember Train being a Celtic folk band, Ni,”

 

He just rolls his eyes and goes back to the guitar, playing a few more chords and occasionally stopping to fiddle with the tuning a bit more. The fire roars in the middle of their circle, and Harry feels his eyes grow heavy and dry from watching the flames and listening to the soft white noise of Niall’s playing.

 

“Niall,” Louis says after a minute, “Why don’t you do one of those songs you and Haz wrote?”

 

Harry just blinks, and turns towards his friend. Louis’s voice sounds far away, and his words seep into his brain slowly. He clears his throat, his voice thick from not speaking.

 

“You…Jesus, you remember those,”

 

“We all do, mate, they were brilliant,” Liam calls from across the fire, nodding, “You had that journal full of them, I remember. Just poems and things, and Niall was like a kid in a sweet shop when you said he could put music to them. We wanted you two to make an album,”

 

Harry rubs his eyes, shaking his head, “Ni most of the work. I just…wrote a bunch of stupid poems,”

 

“Hazza. Please, shut up,” Louis sighs, leaning his head towards Harry’s chair. A few orange sparks crackle off the flames in the middle of the pit, and their light catches in Louis’s eyes, making them fill up with brightness of an undiscernible color. He softly adds, “They were lovely. All of them,”

 

Harry just nods, ignoring the voice of a desperate teenager in his head, shrieking, “For you, for you, I wrote them for you…”

 

He’s so busy trampling down those thoughts that he almost misses Niall strumming out the first few chords of a song he hasn’t heard in years, and the circle of voices all chipping in snatches of half-remembered lyrics.

 

And then.

 

“Who’s this man that’s holding your hand and talking about your eyes…”

 

It’s only when he hears Louis, his voice breaking out loud and fearless and high, that he actually understands what’s happening.

 

He looks over, and catches eyes with Louis just in time to feel a hand wrap around his wrist, and looks down to see slender fingers covering the ink on his skin, and then back up to see a small smile, and that same brilliant light that’s gone from colorless to a clear blue.

 

Louis nods and raises his eyebrows as Niall plays out a few random notes in the background, the rest of the circle losing their footing as they try to remember what comes next.

 

“You remember it, right, Harry?” Louis asks. His thumb shifts, brushing against a vein in Harry’s arm, and he twitches like his body is under attack.

 

“Uh,” he licks his lips, “I think so,”

 

He opens his mouth, “Baby I’ll never leave…if…if you keep holding me this way…”

 

And then he’s singing, actually fucking singing, in front of people, and the last time he’s done this was probably in this exact same spot, watching the same four faces through orange licks of flame, years ago, when he actually thought he had a shot at a career writing for himself and these carefree weekends seemed as permanent as the ground under his feet and as endless as the ocean down the road.

 

He trails off with a final, “Look what you’ve done now,” and realizes at some point the rest of his fri3ends joined him, and also that somewhere along the way he got a massive fucking lump in his throat and that his eyes started watering.

 

“You alright there, love?”

 

He looks over and realizes that Louis is fucking talking to him again, and that his stupid, beautiful hand is still on his wrist. He doesn’t remember if he’s moved it or not this whole time.

 

Harry lifts his pinned-down hand, making Louis’s finger drop away, and swipes at his eyes.

 

“M’fine,” he mumbles, “Just—smoke’s in my eyes, that’s all,”

 

“Well,” Louis says gently, clasping his hands tightly tightly together, “Maybe we should head up, call it a night?”

 

“Since when have you ever turned in early?” Niall laughs sharply, “It’s our last fucking weekend, Tommo, honestly,”

 

“Ah, but I’m an old man now,” Louis sighs, shaking his head, “But I suppose I could try,”

 

“I might head up, actually,” Harry cuts in, but Niall immediately shoots him a look.

 

“Styles. Stay. I know you’re not fucking tired, you already slept for two hours on the drive over here,”

 

“I think I think have some marshmallows, actually,” Liam blurts, “I’ll—uh—I’ll go check the cabinets, we can have some s’mores,”

 

“I’ll help you look,” Zayn adds, already standing up and following Liam into the house.

 

“You see? S’mores! This is fun, we’re having fun,” Niall announces with a grin before going back to the guitar, “Haz, you remember anymore— “

 

“I don’t think I do, Ni,” Harry says, his throat thick, even though a dozen different homemade lyrics flash through his head, “Just, uh, play anything you want,”

 

“Alright then,”

 

The soft chords of the guitar start up again, and Harry dares to look over at Louis, who’s staring straight into the flames, his expression neutral and serene. His hands are folded together, and Harry draws his eyes over the long fingers that had previously gripped his wrist, that he had shook away like they were burning him.

 

He groans softly as he rips his eyes away, hears Liam and Zayn pounding down the porch steps with a bag of marshmallows and boxes of graham crackers and chocolate.

 

Maybe it isn’t the house that’s haunting him. Just one person.

 

Or at least, the useless promise of what one person could have been to him.

\-------------------------------------------

 

“Fergus had never felt desire like the kind he felt now, as he drank in the earth-hardened muscles of Gregor’s body, the true masterpiece resting in the boulder-hard member that hung between his powerful thighs…”

 

Soft morning light pricks at Harry’s eyes and subconscious, and he’s vaguely aware of the feeling of sheets around his body and hair in his mouth. Oh, and that there’s a vaguely familiar voice reading shitty smut out loud, but he can’t quite tell if that’s in reality or something from his sleep-trapped brain.

 

“He took the thick, pulsating snake into his fist and felt as if the gods above had brought the strength of lions into his hand as he milked him, watching as his pale orbs rolled back and his mouth lolled in pleasure…”

 

Harry brings up a hand and rubs it roughly over his eyes, opening them a little too widely as he takes in what’s happening. There’s light in his room, alright, but it’s coming from the lamp on his bedside table, not the darkened sky outside his window.

 

Oh, and Louis is in his room, and that voice definitely belongs to him.

 

The other man is sitting in the armchair by the dresser, and in his hands is a worn book, its pages yellow and its cover marred with thick white lines. But Harry can still see the title, “Highland Songbirds” written out in sprawling font under the image of two bare-chested men wearing matching green kilts and little else.

 

Louis’s eyes flicker up from the page and when he sees Harry is awake, he abruptly stops reading, closes the book around his finger and grins, “Morning, darling,”

 

“Wha—“ Harry glances at the digital alarm clock on the bedside table and rubs his eyes again, “The fuck are you doing in my room? Where’d you get that”

 

“Well, I just wanted to pay you a visit,” Louis replies, “As it turns out, I made an excellent choice. Can’t exactly find literature like this with the others,”

 

Harry’s eyes flicker over to the bookshelf in the corner, and he can see a telltale gap in the packed volumes that makes him wince. There were at least a hundred titles there. Of course Louis had found the singular volume of grocery-store-bought gay erotica.

 

“Yeah, if you could put that away, that would be great,” Harry groans, sitting up and a pushing a few long, wild curls out of his eyes.

 

“Right. Sorry,” Louis sets the book on the floor and raises his hands with a small smile, “And, uh, while I’m at it, sorry for waking you. Especially like this,”

 

Harry wants to snap that, yeah, he should be, but instead mumbles, “It’s fine,”

 

Louis nods and watches him carefully. He pulls one knee to his chest, lacing his slim, delicate hands together and wrapping them around his leg as he rocks gently.

 

“I was going to head out for a walk,” he finally says, nodding towards the window, “Some company would be nice,”

 

“Mm,” Harry gets out, stretching out his neck, “Need help waking up the others? That it?”

 

Louis shakes his head, “I’d kind of like it to be the two of us. You know. More peaceful that way,”

 

“Oh,”

 

“It’s okay if you don’t want to, I’ll just go by myself. But I don’t know, I haven’t seen you since the last time we were here, Haz. And as much as I loved those flowery e-mails of yours, they’re hardly enough after not seeing you in person for three years,”

 

“That’s fair,”

 

“So? A little hike then?”

 

Harry waits entirely too long before answering. He should say yes. He loves those woods, and after that car ride yesterday he desperately needs to move. But. The fact that it’s fucking _Louis_ made him pause.

 

He’s being ridiculous, he knows he is. Louis is his friend, the same as the rest of the lads in the house. And the fact that he had an ill-conceived crush on him when he was a teenager shouldn’t fuck up their friendship as much as he lets it. He’s an adult now. He can handle being alone with a friend he hasn’t seen in two years.

 

“Sure,” he finally says, “Let me find my boots,”

 

“Marvelous,” Louis unfolds his legs from their current position, “Meet me on the deck in ten, yeah?”

 

“Yeah,” Harry repeats and watches as Louis stands up, balancing on the balls of his feet, and then strolls out of the room, his footsteps wide and his shoulders swaying, the way Louis always moves, like he’s trying to take up as much space as possible.

 

A beat after the door shuts behind him, Harry turn back to the chair where Louis had previously been, his eyes fixating on the battered little book on the floor. The sound of Louis’s soft, lilting voice reading the prose sweep through his brain, and he feels heat rush through his body, either out of anger or embarrassment or…something else.

 

He quickly swings his legs over the bed and lets his feet hit the floor a little too hard.

 

He doesn’t really have the energy to figure this out now.

 

\--

When Harry finally makes it outside, the sun is just making itself known.

 

The sky is a featureless white gray shot through with strokes of faded orange, and he rubs his eyes as he questions why he agreed to this. And then he catches sight of Louis and the reason falls perfectly into place.

 

He’s still, sitting on the front porch swing and looking out into the twist of bare trees surrounded them. He’s completely buddled in a parka and a thick beanie, and there’s a battered metal thermos cupped between his gloved hands that he keeps turning over but never opening. He swings gently back and forth, pushing off the deck with the balls of his feet, making the ancient chains whine, and Harry can hear the softest whistle escaping his puckered lips as he moves.

 

He wants it to stay that way for a little longer, but the screen door slams behind him, making Louis jump and turn, the moment broken.

 

“Took you long enough,” he says with a smile, bouncing up from his seat and striding over, “Let’s go then, get the blood pumping,”

 

Harry follows Louis down the porch steps and across the driveway, their boots marching over gravel and then brittle, half-frozen grass once they reach the yard. When they’re finally into the sparse beginnings of the tree line, they’ve fallen in step with one another, Harry moving slowly, clipping his long gait to keep in time with his companion.

 

Louis sighs heavily, releasing a thick puff of white breath into the air, and then begins fiddling with the cap of his thermos so he can take a long drink of its contents.

 

“Want some?” he asks, offering it to Harry, “S’just tea, I promise, nothing naughty”

 

“Right, thanks,” Harry takes the thermos and chugs some down, wincing at both the sharp heat on his tongue and the familiar taste, “I see Liam still keeps some Yorkshire here for you,”

 

Louis rolled his eyes as he takes the thermos back, “Liam would drop dead if he thought his guests weren’t getting exactly what they need every second,”

 

Harry snorts as they dip onto a familiar path.

 

“You do make a solid point,”

 

Harry flips the collar on his coat up and sucks in a freezing breath, flicking his eyes up and around to look at the complex of leafless trees around them. The woods that surround the Payne residence aren’t exactly easy to get lost in. There are a few rather twisty paths but they all stay close to edge of the tree line, and one can only get so deep before the trees open up again into the country roads. It isn’t good for hiking, exactly, but they’d camped in some of the clearings before, and Harry had trekked this short path at least a dozen times over the years, especially when he was in the middle of his Thoreau phase and spent hours among the trees, scribbling in his notebook and pretending he was a literary genius.

 

They finally stopped at a small, steep slope that rose up from the rest of the ground, and at the top the sky sprawled out widely, violent orange and pink overtaking the plain grey.

 

“Now that was worth it, wasn’t it?”

 

Harry shrugs at Louis’s question, his brain suddenly reminding him how tired he is, “Mm, haven’t decided yet,”

 

“Don’t be an arse,” Louis scolds, taking a long sip from his thermos and then setting the metal container down by one of the bare trees before walking back over to Harry.

 

 “So how’s the novel coming?” Louis asks, “Haven’t seen your name on anything in the shops, so I assume it’s still a work in progress?”

 

“You could say that,” Harry says drily, “I haven’t really touched my first draft in a year and a half,”

 

“Ah,” Louis nodded, “So what is it, then? Taking it in a new direction? Starting something new?”

 

“Writer’s block. That, and I’ve been too damn busy writing reviews for protein powder to anything I want to do,”

 

“Right, heard you were in the men’s magazine industry now. Grammar Magazine, wasn’t it?” Louis asks, “As awful as it sounds?”

 

“I work with a bunch of misogynistic homophobes, and the senior style editor still thinks it’s acceptable to wear a muscle shirt with jeans and a blazer as a formal look. Honestly, hell would be more merciful,”

 

Louis lets out a sharp cackle, and claps a hand over his mouth, “Oh, Christ, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t laugh, that’s bleedin’ horrible,”

 

“No, it’s okay. Laugh or you’ll cry, I guess,”

 

“Right, moving on. Hey, what about—what about that bloke you were seein’ last year? You still together?”

 

“Oh. You mean Alex?”

 

“Yeah, that one,”

 

“Oh, that’s—ancient history now, really,”

 

It shouldn’t shock him that Louis knows about Alex. Harry wasn’t really one to flaunt his relationship in real life or online, but he knew when he and his ex were still together that there had been a Facebook relationship status, a few indirect tweets listing off memorable dates or kind gestures, maybe an Instagram picture of interlaced hands every now and then. Enough for the world to know.

 

Harry hasn’t updated his profiles for a while. That stuff really should come down.

 

“Ah, that’s—sorry to hear that,” Louis offers. His voice seems cautious, like he’s unsure of whether or not Harry is still heartbroken.

 

“It’s okay. Nothing interesting there, really. We were never right for each other, not even on our best days. Just took us a while to figure that out,” Harry shrugs a little too hard, “But enough about me. What about the acting? How’s that working out for you?”

 

Louis blinks and looks away, his voice laced with an empty laugh, “Well, Haz, I’ll be honest with you, not too well,” he touches the back of his head, lacing the strands of his hair between his fingers and giving it a tug, “Remember how…shit, remember how my mum was always so loose with me? Just wanted me to follow my dreams, be happy, all that shit?”

 

“You’re a lucky bastard for that, you know. Mine’s still begging me to go to law school, get a real job,”

 

“Was,” Louis cuts in, “I _was_ a lucky bastard. Because she’s not really playing the supportive tune any longer,”

 

“Yeah?” Harry’s feet shift and he tilts his head, “What’s going on, then?”

 

“She’s cutting me off,” Louis says, scratching his chin, “End of the year, unless I get a big break or something. But in all likelihood, I’m going to wake up on New Year’s Day a bum with just the cash in his pockets,”

 

“Oh,” Harry murmurs. In all honesty, this isn’t exactly shocking. But, still…Louis has wanted this acting thing to work out for as long as Harry has known him, “Jesus, Lou, that’s awful,”

 

“Don’t worry yourself,” he shrugs, “Maybe it’s for the best, you know? I mean, look at me, I’m twenty-six and still trying to be a movie star. It’s pathetic, really,”

 

“It’s not,” Harry says weakly. Louis gives him a sideways glance and a fleeting smile, and then exhales heavily, the air swirling white with his breath.

 

“Now this, this is ironic, isn’t it? Talking about how fucking miserable we are in the same place we used to talk about how great we’d be eventually,” he says, “You remember all those talks?”

 

“Yeah,” Harry admits, “I’d write the best seller, and you’d get to be the leading man in the movie,”

 

“Niall would’ve done the soundtrack, Zayn would’ve directed it or something. Liam…”

 

“Would’ve funded it, probably,”

 

“Yeah. Exactly. Those were the days, huh. Now look where we are,” Louis huffs, his eyebrows pinched, “Are any of us even happy?”

 

“Niall is,”

 

Louis laughs and rolls his eyes, “Well, that’s a given,”

 

Harry nods, then brings his hands up to his mouth, blowing air onto his frozen fingers and rubbing them roughly together as he squints out at the bleeding orange horizon line.

 

“Should’ve brought some gloves there, Hazza,”

 

Harry drops his hands limply to his sides and shoots Louis a half-hearted glare, “Fuck off,”

 

“Ah, easy. I’m just teasing. Here,”

 

Harry jumps as Louis’s hand wraps around his wrist for the second time in twelve hours, and before he can even process it his warm, gloved fingers are laced with Harry’s numb ones. Louis glances at him and smiles, pulling Harry closer to him as he tucks their laced hands into the pocket of his coat.

 

“Afraid I can’t do much for your other hand,”

 

“S’okay,”

 

They stand like that for what seems like both seconds and hours, gazing at the unchanging sunrise. Harry wriggles his fingers around Louis’s tight grip, his knuckles shoved so far into his pocket that he can feel Louis’s sharp hipbone bump against his hand when he moves.

 

It’s either two or two thousand seconds later, but eventually Louis pulls their entwined hands out of his pocket and lets go, making Harry’s fingers tingle with the absence of touch.

 

“Well,” Louis says, trudging over to spot where he’d left his thermos earlier, “I suppose that’s enough of that,”

 

Louis tucks the thermos into the inside pocket of his coat and then shuffles down the sloped ground, glancing over his shoulder and motioning to Harry.

 

“Let’s go home,”

 

Harry’s feet shuffle in the dead leaves, eliciting several dry crackles under his boots.

 

“Okay,” he takes a step forward, holding out his arms to steady himself on the steep decline. Then, he feels a pressure on his hand as Louis takes it again, brushing a soft thumb over his knuckles.

 

“Watch your step, now, can’t have you twistin’ an ankle,” he chuckles, pulling on Harry’s arm until he takes a few more cautious steps down, “There you are,”

 

“Yeah,” Harry agrees, looking down at their hands, “Here I am,”

 

Louis tugs on his arm again, a bit harder this time, and then they’re off without another word.

 

They start running, their feet crunching wildly on the dead leaves and their breath coming out sharp and short, and yet they somehow manage to make it down the hill and onto flat ground, through the winding, unclear forest paths and back into the open without any twisted limbs.

 

Louis doesn’t let go of Harry’s hand until they make it to the porch. When he finally lets their fingers drop, Harry’s hand feels numb and hot, and his fingers instinctively reach out, touching only air.

 

He shoves his hands into his pockets, a little too deep, and goes inside.

\--------------------------------------

 

When they make it inside, the rest of the boys are awake and crowded into the kitchen.

 

Liam stands at the stove, flipping over a few sets of blackened pancakes, the smooth sound of his favorite old-rock Pandora station pulsing from where his iPhone is sitting on the counter. Zayn is perched on one of the stools at the island, fully dressed in another outfit devoid of color and sipping slowly from a novelty mug covered in cartoon foxes. Niall sits next to him, outfitted in pajamas, flat hair, and bleary eyes, as he shoves bite after syrupy bite of pancakes into his mouth.

 

At the sound of Harry’s boots slapping the hardwood directly outside the kitchen, Zayn lifts his head, glancing between the two of them as he sets his mug and waves.

 

“Morning,” he greets, “We thought you two were still asleep,”

 

“Nah, went for a walk. Nice to get out and all,” Louis says, already stepping into the kitchen. He snatches a pancake off the stack that’s sitting in the middle of the island, biting into it and wincing, “Jesus, you still can’t cook, Li,”

 

Liam turns, shaking his head as Louis hoists himself onto the marble countertop and continues to eat the pancake with his hands.

 

“And you’re still not civilized,”

 

Louis shrugs, rubbing a thumb over his lips to clear it of crumbs, “Why don’t ya ever let Harry make anything? He’s the only one here who can actually cook,”

 

“Because he’s a guest in my house and I don’t make my guests work,” Liam says, “Speaking of which, for God’s sake, Harry, sit down, get something to eat,”

 

“Alright,” Harry pulls out one of the free stools and sits, glancing at the cold, burned plate of pancakes for a moment before turning away, “Um, you have something besides

this, by chance?”

 

Liam sighs and turns off the stove flame, pulling the last of his ruined creations off the heat, “Sure, one second,”

 

Ten minutes later, and Niall’s eaten all the pancakes his body can physically handle, Zayn’s convinced Louis to get a plate (but not get off the counter), and Harry has a half-empty bowl of honey yogurt balanced between his knees. Liam hasn’t eaten anything, instead he’s just chugging back coffee and staring out the window into the frosty yard.

 

“So what should we do today?” he finally asks, shifting his hands around his mug, “I didn’t really…I didn’t plan anything,”

 

“That’s alright,” Louis assures him, “We’ll figure something out,”

 

“Should we go to the shore?” Zayn asks, “Be nice to head back there,”

 

“We could, but it’s cloudy,” Liam points out, “We can go tomorrow, though. It’ll be sunny then,”

 

“Right, so we’ll stay here today,”

 

“Alright, then, what are we going to do here?”

 

“Well that shouldn’t be too hard, should it?” Harry says, setting his bowl back on the counter, “Li, you have some footballs and all downstairs, don’t you?”

 

Liam nods, and Harry catches Louis’s eyes just in time to know that they’re thinking exactly the same thing.

 

“And more importantly,” Louis says, a smile twitching wildly on his lips, “Do you still have that costume trunk downstairs?”

 

\-------------------------------

Liam’s parents were big fans of costume parties.

 

They had thrown dozens of parties in this house, and about half of them required a disguise just to enter. Harry still remembers the week they’d been over and were informed about one of these legendary parties about two hours before it happened.

 

“What do you mean we need costumes? We didn’t bring anything,” he’d mumbled, standing in the middle of the Paynes’ living room as he watched a uniformed catering team carry in silver trays laden with appetizers and hang feathers and crystals from the ceiling.

 

“Oh, don’t worry,” Liam had assured him and the rest of the group, “Mum’s got loads of things down in the basement,”

 

That was the first time they’d discovered the massive collection of costumes, and for whatever reason, they’d skipped right over the Victorian overcoats and gone for the collection of lace-covered skirts and corsets. That night, long after the cast of guests had left, they’d snuck out to the yard and organized a midnight game of football, still dressed in silk stockings and ballgown skirts.

 

Since that night, women’s clothes and football had become a tradition.

 

“This brilliant, it really is,” Louis mumbles. He’s standing in the middle of the oppressively clean basement, bent over one of the bigger trunks of pieces, rifling through the stacks of fabric and shaking his head, “He actually kept all this,”

 

“Well it wouldn’t exactly run a high bidding price, would it?” Harry says, lifting up an age-softened black lace camisole, “What do you think? Zayn?”

 

“Oh, definitely,” Louis snatches it from his hands and tosses it behind him, “Got a nice little pile for him. Found those red gloves he used to like, too,”

 

“Perfect,”

 

“You two put too much effort into this,”

 

Both of them turn and see Liam standing in the doorway, with his arms crossed and his eyes bright despite his best attempts at being serious. Louis just rolls his eyes.

 

“Oi, get in the fuckin’ spirit,” he shouts, tossing a purple bra in the air and cackling as Liam ducks wildly to avoid it, “Can’t a bunch of grown men wear your mother’s clothes and play football in peace?”

 

“Well, Christ, at least finish up and get to the football part. Niall’s getting antsy up there. Poor boy’s the only one stood around in a skirt,”

 

“Well then, here,” Louis tosses him the red and black heap that is apparently Zayn’s ensemble, “This is for Malik. You want something, too?”

 

“Why the hell not,”

 

“Right. Personally I think that bra would look dashing on you, mate, but…” Louis turns to Harry, “Haz? What do you think Li should wear?”

 

“Ah,” Harry shrugs, “I don’t know if I can pick,”

 

“Some for God’s sake, just get me something, ah, yellow,” Liam finally says.

 

“Alright then,” Harry digs through a pile of semi-decent things he’s already pulled out and tosses Liam the fabric equivalent of a lemon pastry.

 

“Thanks, mate,” Liam nods to him as he caught the dress, “Be out soon, alright?”

 

“No problem,” Louis promises and turns back to the trunk as soon as Liam is out of the doorway. He pinches his eyebrows and scrunches his nose as he stares down the haphazard pile at his feet, “Damn it, I still can’t find anything,”

 

“I might have something, actually,” Harry offers. He fumbles around in the pile of random, promising pieces he’d pulled out earlier and whips out a flash of blue, unfurling and offering it to Louis.

 

The other man’s eyes flick over and then back to Harry, and he just nods.

 

“Now that’s something,” he takes it and then turns back to the trunk, “Alright, let’s find something to make _you_ pretty, Styles,”

\--

 

Ten minutes later, and Harry’s stepping out into the dying sunlight, brushing shoulders with a Louis as they advance onto the porch and into the yard.

 

There’s a circle of thick plastic roses wrapped around his head and a white ballet skirt pulled over his jeans that’s far too short but was the last thing they could find before realizing they were taking too long picking things out. Meanwhile, Louis is a column of soft, regal blue that makes Harry’s eyes burn, but he’s ignoring that because he just wants to walk straight.

 

They have to step around Zayn, who’s already thrown himself over the porch steps, and make it out into the yard. Liam is apparently already regretting the lemon monstrosity they gave him, because Niall is right in front of him, adjusting the straps on his shoulders and muttering, “Jesus, you look fine,” every few seconds.

 

He turns when Harry and Louis gets closer, and he grins, the sequins on his beaded Irish dance costume catching the fading light as he points towards him

 

“See? You aren’t even going all out. Style is wearing a fuckin’ tiara,”

 

Harry ducks his head and readjusts the flower crown, partially out of embarrassment and partially because the too-big band is already slipping down his forehead again. He doesn’t even know if he really likes it, but…it was kind of Louis’s idea and he’s weak.

 

“Hey now, don’t embarrass him,” Louis chides, slinging an arm around Harry quickly before letting it drop, “Come on, pass it here,”

 

Liam shrugs, pulls away from Niall, and kicks the ball over to Louis, who smoothly catches it under his foot and then kicks it between the two bushes off to the left that have become a makeshift goal.

 

“You just scored against yourself, Tommo,”

 

“Oh, fuck off. Since when have we had rules?”

 

Liam just rolls his eyes and jogs over to retrieve the ball, his feet snagging on the folds of his dress, “Fair point,”

 

When he throws it back onto the field, the game picks up again. Harry has the ball kicked in his direction once, and he feebly sends it back and then goes to sit on the steps, where Zayn has already claimed safely. He’s not exactly awful at football, it’s just that the last time he played against Louis and Liam he had bruises on his calves for two weeks afterwards.

 

Besides, right now he’s more content to just sit and watch Louis attempt to play in a full formal dress. It’s not exactly a bad gig. Every time he kicks, he’s briefly lost in a swirl of cerulean chiffon, which of course makes him laugh and adjustment the single strap on his shoulder as he jogs and resumes his position.

 

Harry tries to tell him that it doesn’t mean anything.

 

“Your boy’s doing well,” Zayn observes suddenly, stretching a finger in Louis’s direction.

 

“He’s not my boy,” Harry shakes his head, and feels one of the flowers slip over to one side of his head. He must have been staring too hard. Damn it.

 

“Well he’s more yours than anyone else’s,” Zayn says with a shrug. Harry glances over at him, wondering if Zayn actually knows how he feels about Louis. He might not. But then again, it’s Zayn. Zayn notices shit. And try as he might, Harry’s not exactly the subtlest person.

 

Luckily, Zayn doesn’t bring it up again, and they just watch their other three friends run wild.

 

When they start a game, Harry can always see Louis the way he first knew him. He knew about him before they became friends, because everyone at school knew about Louis. Harry vaguely remembers football games he used to go to on the weekends when he nothing better to do, but Louis kind of blurred in with all the other red jerseys at the time. It wasn’t until Harry knew him that he started to go to these games with a purpose, sometimes bringing the other boys and sometimes just going alone.

 

Louis always looks so happy and in the zone like this, so stripped down and yet so full of life. Harry can’t describe it, really. He’s tries. A lot of crumpled, half-blank pages ended up on his bedroom floor after he got home from his first time cheering Louis on.

 

 Only he doesn’t see that now. Louis’s still smiling, yeah, still throwing himself into the game, but something’s missing. Not just from him but from the other two as well. There’s no real completion, no real rules, even the haphazard guidelines they usually play by. He can’t help but feel like it’s empty. Like they’re trying too hard to make it all work.

 

Harry must not be the only one to sense this, because at some point Zayn stand up and whistles.

 

“Lads,” he calls out, “It’s looking a little dark out, it might rain. Let’s go inside for a while, yeah?”

 

“We haven’t finished yet,” Niall says softly, crossing his arms. Zayn shakes his head and crosses the lawn, wrapping one gloved arm around Niall’s dejected shoulders.

 

“Don’t worry. We weren’t exactly keeping score anyways,” he tells Niall, “Let’s go inside. I’ll make hot chocolate,”

 

They just nod, Liam picking up the stray football as he went inside. They strip off the costumes and put them away one last time, let the quiet and the smell of heating chocolate wash over the living room as they return upstairs.

 

It doesn’t rain.

 

\---------------------------------

 

 “Haz?”

 

Harry glances up from the screen of his laptop, his boss’s short yet grating email still flashing in front of his eyes as he turns around. His bedroom door is cracked open, and Niall stands in the space between the room and the hallway, wearing his coat and a gray flat cap. He smiles sheepishly as Harry pulls out one of his earbuds and rubs his eyes, and takes his lack of protest as an invitation to open the door further.

 

“Hey, sorry to bother you,”

 

“You weren’t, don’t worry,” Harry tells him, “What’s up? Why’re you dressed?”

 

“Oh, ah,” Niall nods back towards the hall, “Lads and I are goin’ down to Alabaster’s for a drink. Thought you might be to come along,”

 

“That place is a dive,”

 

“I know. Just…well, I’ve been thinking Li needs a drink, you know? Just somethin’ to perk him up. And I’ve been missing the town, so…”

 

Harry considers going out for about three seconds and then mentally vetoes the idea. It’s already close to eleven, and the rest of his energy has been depleted by the day. After the failed football game, the rest of the hours had been a whirlwind of Liam trying to keep the group on track: recorded sports games were turned on and off, card games were laid out, played, reshuffled, and tucked away a few times every hour, there were random crashes of music upstairs as Niall fiddled with Daisy and Louis tried to dust off the old piano. Really, it had been tough, more than anything. They were used to not have to try so hard to fill their time.

 

Now, all Harry needs is time to breathe.

 

“Suit yourself,” he shrugs, “I think I’m okay,”

 

“You sure?” Niall asks, but he’s already backing towards the door.

 

“Yes, I’m sure. I’ll see you tomorrow,”

 

“Well, okay then. Shame if we meet any fit men tonight and you’re not around…”

 

“ _Leave_ ,”

 

“Alright, Jesus, I’m going,” Niall sighs, his body already covered in the shadows of the hallway, “Have a good night, Harry,”

 

“Yeah, you too,” he rubs hard at a spot over his eyebrow and barely hears the door click shut behind him. He keeps thinking about that damn e-mail. It hadn’t been anything out of the ordinary, just a reminder to have Harry’s article on the editor’s desk first thing Tuesday morning, along with a passive aggressive comment to “always keep the reader in mind”.

 

Harry isn’t an idiot. He knows he’s a lot younger than most of the Grammar staff, but also that he writes better than most of his more seasoned co-workers, so he can’t exactly get fired anytime soon on his writing quality alone. But he also knows that he’s a man who wears silk button downs and printed scarves into work and who doesn’t bother hiding that his typical weekends are split between watching baking shows on his DVR and frequenting gay bars. If there’s a less qualified person to work at that testosterone-fueled hellhole, it’s him. So he gets a lot of reminders about relating to his fragilely masculine audience, who probably fear yoga more than death, despite how much Harry wants to tell him that it works far better than the stupid workout DVDs he’s going to have to review soon.

 

But he’s gotten dozens of these stupid fucking reminders in the year since he started working there. It shouldn’t bother him. Not this much.

 

He rolls his neck and stuffs an earbud back in, hoping the Stones sooth him, but soon pauses his music and leans back, unable to shake the shitty feeling in his stomach.

 

Then, as he lifts his head to look out the window, he realizes the issue. Once again, it’s this room. This house. He used to sit in the same spot and dream of writing novels, and now he’s finally a writer and doing nothing he really wants to do.

 

He wonders what that sixteen-year-old who first sat here with a marbled journal and a dull pencil would think of him now.

 

 

He needs air. Tea. Sleep. All of the above.

 

Harry stands up and stretches, standing on the tips of his toes and pulling his arms far above his head until he can brush his fingers against the low ceiling. He lets his arms drop and his feet fall back on the floor, but his knees and shoulders ache from the promise of a stretch that was cut short. He rubs one shoulder absentmindedly and ambles to the door, pulling it open and padding out into the darkened hallway as he goes to seek out a late night cuppa.

 

Harry’s halfway down the stairs, rubbing his eyes and softly singing the broken-up lyrics to a song that’s stuck in his head, when he abruptly stops. His hands fall away from his face and his eyes widen as he takes in the sight of the Technicolor glare of the TV, the roaring glow of the electric fire on the opposite wall, the familiar, and the shaggy head of hair lolling against the back of the couch, one arm slung lazily over the leather.

 

Louis turns around before Harry can even get down the next step, and he smiles widely as he watches Harry descend the rest of the staircase.

 

“Ah, there you are, out of your cave,” Louis chirps.

 

“Oh, yeah” Harry mutters, running a hand through his hair, “Figured—figured you went with the others,”

 

“To that shithole? Jesus, no. Some traditions are best left in the past,” he shakes his head and pulls his feet off of the magazine-littered coffee table, “Thank God you stuck around, too, I was getting bored. Let’s do something,”

 

“Lou, I’m not—“ Harry pinches the bridge of his nose and a well-timed yawn snakes out of his mouth, “I just came down for some tea. I need to sleep…”

 

“Nonsense. You’ve still got another night to catch up. Come on,” Louis unfolds himself from the couch and jogs into the kitchen, “You want tea, I’ll make it. Just…stay with me for a while,”

 

“Thought you were trying to be an adult. No more late nights,”

 

“And here I thought you knew me,” Louis’s laugh is clear all the way from the kitchen, “Just because I stay in doesn’t mean I can’t have a good time—what do you drink again? It’s that herbal shit, innit?”

 

“Just—whatever you find,” Harry sighs, collapsing into one of the massive armchairs and rubbing his face. He needs to get better with saying no.

 

 “Ah, change of plans!” he winces at Louis’s loud declaration, and turns in time to see his friend leaning out of the kitchen doorway, gripping an expensive bottle of brandy in his fist, “Liam left it out. This is good shit, and we’re drinking it,”

 

“I dunno if I’m up for that, Lou,”

 

“Alright, I’m still making your tea, s’just a little nightcap, yeah?”

 

“I guess,”

 

“Fantastic. Give me a minute…”

 

Harry closes his eyes and listens to the white noise of glasses clinking one another for a few minutes before Louis speaks again.

 

“Hey, Haz, go pick out some music, would ya? Too quiet out here,”

 

“Never quiet with you around,”

 

A loud clunk of glass on marble followed, along with Louis’s laugh, “Watch your mouth, Curly,”

 

Harry shakes his head and eases his still-cramped body out of the chair, stretching his limbs out again as he goes across the room and over to a small, glossy black set of folding closest doors. He finishes rolling one of his wrists and then cracks open the doors, taking a moment to breathe in the smell of dust and vinyl.

 

The Paynes kept their record player in here. An honest-to-God record player, surrounded by a dozen crates stuffed with the vinyl records they’d collected over the years. Virtually every room in the house is connected in one of the most gorgeous, state-of-the-art sound systems money can buy, but as far as Harry is concerned, it still can’t hold a candle to this thing.

 

He runs his hand over the collection of records, his fingers twitching over the vinyl tucked away in softened cardboard cases.

 

Each of them brings back a distinct memory: The crackling old rock that had been Zayn’s choice their first year and still remained one of his favorites. The endless array of jazz is a souvenir from the first New Year’s they spent together, holed up in Liam’s room passing around a bottle of peppermint schnapps and a pack of stolen cigarettes, occasionally opening the window and blowing rebel smoke out into the chilled night air. The collections of love songs usually brought on a mixed bag of reactions: complaining about loneliness, bragging about conquests, informing the rest of the group of a newfound prospect.

 

“For God’s sake, just pick one,”

 

Harry jumps not only at Louis’s voice, but the suddenness of his presence behind him, how wrapped up he must have been in his memories to not even notice him. Louis’s arm reaches in front of him, their bare forearms brushing for a hair-spilt second before he grabs one of the cases and pulls back, shoving the selection against Harry’s chest.

 

“Here,” he sighs, “This one,”

 

Harry blinks, then gets a grip on the sides on the casing and glances at the picture covering the front, his cheeks flashing with heat as he recognizes the male singer, wrapped in a bear skin and a small army of naked women. They listened to this album once, years ago, and the main things he remembers from that experience that the cover is G-rated compared to the lyrics inside, and after it had finished that Liam had gotten a long lecture from his father on what was and was not appropriate to show to his guests.

 

“You wanna listen to this? You sure?”

 

“Yeah, why not?” Louis shrugs and snatches the record back, moving towards the player, “How the hell do you use this thing, anyways?”

 

“I, uh, I got it,” Harry taps Louis’s shoulder and then pulls his hand away like he’s touched a stovetop. Louis glances over, his eyes unshifting as he hands the record back over and watches as Harry pulls out the vinyl, lifts the needle, and puts the record into place. A low crackling sound springs free as the needle lowers, and then the heady first notes float out.

 

Harry shoves his hands into the pockets of his jeans and steps back, watching the black vinyl turn and wobble on the stand, “There,”

 

“Great. Now c’mon, sit down,” Louis says, smacking him on the shoulder as he wanders back over to the couch. The bottle of brandy is perched on the coffee table, along with a pair of smudged glasses and a set of mugs filled with milk-lightened tea.

 

Louis reaches toward the bottle and unscrews the top as Harry sits down and crosses one leg over the other, squeezing himself to the opposite side of the couch.

 

Once the drinks are poured and the bottle settled down on the finished wood with a soft tap, Louis raises one half-full glass, “Cheers,”

 

Harry takes his own glass off the table and shifts it in his damp hand, trying to get a solid grip as he raises it, “To the ones left behind,”

 

They tap their glasses together a little too hard, the sound dull and harsh, and then pull back, swigging down the first sharp taste in unison. Harry shakes his head as he swallows and sets his glass back down on the table, picking up his mug instead.

 

“This is always how I pictured you when you’re back home, you know?” Louis says, gripping his glass close to his chest and observing Harry with sharp, careful eyes, “Like, listening to old music, glass of scotch, writing like a typewriter or something, like the greats,”

 

“That’s an awfully romantic way to think of it,” Harry chuckles, although he can’t help but feel a twinge in his chest over the realization that Louis actually thinks about him outside of these walls, “Wish things had worked out like that,”

 

“Do you…” Louis rubs the scruff on his jaw and taps his chin, “Do you still have that typewriter we gave you that one Christmas?”

 

“I do,” Harry says, “S’in my closet, actually, I just haven’t touched in a while. The ribbon’s fucked up, I gotta get it replaced eventually and that’s not exactly the easiest thing to find…”

 

“Right. Of course,” Louis agrees, “You know, actually, I still have the first thing you wrote after we gave it to you,”

 

Harry starts, and leans over to pick up his tea to hide his jerk reaction, “You do?”

 

 _Of course_ he does. It had been two days before Christmas when he’d gotten the typewriter, and he’d sat speechless in a sea of ripped wrapping paper as each of the boys came around to squeeze his shoulders, murmuring about how they all pitched in to buy it and that they couldn’t wait to see all he did with it.

 

The first thing he’d done was write a poem. It had been nearly midnight when he finished it, and he still remembers the nerves churning in his stomach as he pulled the page out of the machine and cradled it in his hands as he shuffled down the hall to Louis’s room.

 

Louis had been shirtless when he opened the door, a pair of trackies hanging loosely off his sharp hipbones, one hand rubbing at the small curve in his stomach as he blinked.

 

“Haz?” he’d croaked as Harry wordlessly held out the paper to him.

 

“Early birthday present,” Harry had explained as Louis’s eyes skimmed over the page, his mouth twitching as he came to the final lines.

 

He’d hugged him when he finished, his bed-rumpled warmth completely covering Harry despite the fact his newfound growth spurt had officially made him taller than Louis now.

 

“Thank you, Hazza,” he’d whispered his his shoulder, “I’m gonna keep this forever. Forever and ever,”

 

He didn’t think he’d meant it.

 

“I have it hanging on the wall in my flat. See it every day,” Louis smiles, “Maybe one day I can brag about it. ‘You know Harry Styles, the novelist? He wrote this for me when he was eighteen’,”

 

Harry snorts and presses his steaming mug to his bottom lip, “I already told you—that’s pretty much behind me,”

 

“Oh, Jesus, Harry, come off of it,” Louis sighs, “You can’t tell me you don’t miss writing. You were so damn good at it— “

 

“Of course I do,” he groans, “But you don’t give up everything just because you _like_ something. That’s not how adulthood works, you should know that better than anyone,”

 

Louis’s mouth twists and he glances away, and Harry feels his cheeks burn immediately.

 

“Fuck. Fuck, I’m so—I’m sorry, that wasn’t okay,”

 

“No, you’re right,” Louis admits, “They’re my shitty choices, you don’t have to apologize. And you’re right, anyways,” he shakes his head and grimaces, turning his glass in his hands and staring down at his shifting fingers, “Can we talk about something else? Something less fucking shitty than our lives?”

 

“Okay,” Harry agrees softly. His mouth is suddenly dry and he takes a long, shaky sip of his tea, “What do you want to talk about, Louis?”

 

He just shrugs limply, pursing his lips, “Tell me about London. I miss it,”

 

“Of course,”

 

Louis had lived in London for longer than Harry. That’s where he’d gone at first for auditions and talent meetings before quickly realizing that there were hundreds of young, hopeful actors exactly like him there and that the city, with both its prices and population, was eating him alive. The last year they’d been at the house Louis had just moved to Oxford and over the last couple years has slipped into doing small roles in a local theater and wiping counters in bars. At some point Liam had told him that he could try and get him into some classes at Oxford’s theater program, but of course Louis had turned him down. He said he was happy, he didn’t need help, that the starving artist life was actually starting to grow on him.

 

But Harry can tell, from both Louis’s tweets in the last couple years to his tone now, that he misses London desperately. So Harry indulges him. He narrates the trails of his too-small apartment and how his landlord is insane, but makes sure to mention that he has a nice view, and that there’s a bakery down the road where he gets his breakfast and a pre-wrapped sandwich for lunch every morning before catching the tube to work. How on Saturdays he sometimes goes to some of the outdoor concerts and Shakespeare street performances a block away. How there’s this new pub he’s taken to going to when he needs to take his mind off things for a while, because they hang up a lot of pretty decent local art and one of the bartenders is cute and always give him discount on his drinks.

 

Louis smiles peacefully and nods as Harry speaks, even though he isn’t really saying anything particularly interesting. He must really miss his city. Or maybe it isn’t about that at all. Maybe Louis, for once, is just tired to talking and wants to listen.

 

Either way, Harry keeps talking. At several points he thinks he’s drained all his stories but soon new ones keep popping into his head, and he’s grateful for that. He doesn’t know what they’d have to say if they couldn’t talk about something safe.

 

He watches as Louis keeps filling his glass with amber liquid, and at some point he considers asking him to slow down, drink some tea and give the alcohol time to settle in his bloodstream. But he decides against it. Louis’s a bit of a lightweight, but, as much as he tries to play it off, he’s perfectly aware of it. He knows what he’s doing. Probably.

 

Harry can already see the effects of the alcohol taking over his friend, from the bright pink flush that’s staining his cheeks, to the way his voice sounds higher and his accent is slurring thickly over his words. He doesn’t really mind, actually. Louis’s a happy, chatty drunk. And he can still hold a decent conversation, apparently.

 

“Haz,” Louis interrupts, his voice soft and dreamy and far off, “Do you remember—the summer you and me and Zayn were all in London together? And we always visited that cake shop because it was the only place we could afford?”

 

“Of course I remember,”

 

“D’you ever go back there?”

 

“Oh. No, actually,” Harry shakes his head, “Alex and I, we, uh, we looked for it once, for a date night. But I don’t think we ever found it. I should look again, though, that was a good place,”

 

Louis tilts his head and his eyes shift and clear for the briefest moment.

 

“Do you miss him? Alex?” he asks.

 

“No,” Harry answers, and he realizes he’s telling the truth, “I don’t know if we were ever really in love, you know? It was more like…we were infatuated for a couple weeks, and then we were just…polite for a year. Nothing to miss, really,”

 

“But it’s been a while, yeah? When you gonna get out there again?”

 

“It’s—it’s been less than a year,” Harry shrugs, “And I’m not in a rush, exactly. I don’t exactly think I’m a hot commodity right now, anyways,”

 

“Now you’re just talking shit,” Louis scoffs.

 

“Alright, Lou, whatever you say,”

 

“No, no, look at me, c’mon, look,”

 

Harry rubs his wet lips along the back of his hand and then turns, starting when he sees how close Louis is. He must have moved when he wasn’t looking.

 

“See? You—“ Louis reaches out and runs his fingers over Harry’s mouth, the pads of his fingers catching on his bottom lip, “You’re s’pretty. Any bastard would be lucky to have you. _Lucky_ , you know?”

 

“Uh,” he shifts and put his hand on Louis’s shoulder, “Lou, I think you’ve had too much,”

 

“No, no, m’fine. And m’not done yet,” he coughs and his hand shifts up, pressing against Harry’s cheek. The tips of his fingers brush into the roots of his hair and he blinks, “Those London blokes are so fucking _stupid_ , Hazza. Are they—they’re all blind, they are. They should all wanna _marry_ you,”

 

“Alright, I know, now that’s enough,” Harry says, but his voice is tight and unconvincing, and Louis just whines and pinches Harry’s cheek hard enough to make him wince.

 

“You know, Harry, you’re gonna be just fine,” he slurs, and then his other hand is pressed on Harry’s other cheek, “Just fine,”

 

Louis drags his hands down and tilts his head, and then Harry feels a hard pinch on his chest and arches his back out of instinct. Louis’s hands are on his chest, and his fingers are twisting into his shirt, pinching sharply at the hard points of his nipples.

 

Harry’s eyes flutter closed and he bites the inside of his cheek, trying to quell the involuntary moan building up in his throat. Louis’s head dips down and Harry feels his thick, scotch-scented breath on his neck. His mouth skims against Harry’s cheek, dangerously close to the edge of his lips, and then Louis’s soft lips touch down the the neckline of his t-shirt.

 

Harry opens his eyes again and stares straight at the ceiling, at the endlessly high wooden beams above his head. The record player croons in the background, and his temple pounds softly to the beat. He can’t breath. How can he, with Louis’s fingers still curled into his shirt, his legs slotted between Harry’s thighs, his body so close that Harry can feel the bottom of Louis’s ribcage pressing into his abdomen, the way his stomach trembles when he breaths.

 

He wonders what would happen if the rest of the boys came home from the bar right about now and found them. He wonders what would happen if they didn’t.

 

There’s a loud crackle in the background that makes both of them jump and then the air fills with oppressive silence, the kind that only comes when there’s been noise for too long.

 

Louis lifts his head and drops his hands, blinking his wide, beautiful eyes as he shifts off of Harry.  

 

“The record’s over,” he mumbles.

 

“Huh,” Harry nods, still staring at the ceiling, “I guess it is,”

 

“Can you get it, Hazza? I might break it,”

 

“Yeah, of course, Lou, “

 

“Alright. Thanks,” he blinks and looks around, “I should—I’m gonna sleep,”

 

“Oh. Okay,”

 

Harry watches as Louis stands up, teetering a moment, muttering, “M’fine, m’fine” when Harry reaches out to help him.

 

He drops his hand, uselessly, and looks over at the small dent in the couch where Louis had previously been. He can feel the moment slipping away like it’s rolling out to sea, the potential of the night evaporating quickly and letting normalcy fill in the cracks again.

 

Harry feels like he could start screaming.

 

“Night, Harry,” Louis murmurs.

 

“Yeah. Night,”

 

He watches as Louis sways as he walked, somehow making it to the steps, swinging his legs widely to climb and singing softly to himself, gasping out a short, breathy giggle when he trips on a step and has to grab onto the handrail tightly the rest of the way.

 

He’s happy, in his own little booze-soaked world.  

 

Meanwhile, Harry is a wreck.

 

He sits curled into the corner of the couch, staring straight ahead, feeling the ghost of human contact on his shoulders, his cheeks, his whole body. There’s a fresh blush burning in his cheeks and, of fucking course, a newfound tightness in the crotch of his jeans. His heart is hammering in his chest, and he leans forward, fisting his curls in his hands and tugging like it will do something to clear his mind.

 

His stomach rolls as he realizes he can’t deny this anymore.

 

This isn’t stupid puppy love anymore. He can’t write it off as pesky memories brought about these four walls, something better in rosy-colored memories than in the reality. What just happened…that had brought on something real. From the thoughts in his head to the flush in his cheeks to the hard on his body isn’t about to let him forget about. All because Louis had laid on top of him, told he was pretty, touched his fucking nipples…

 

He runs his hands over his thighs, and when his thumb accidently brushes over his groin he actually moans and curls in on himself with the pure need to release, to let Louis’s eyes and hands fill his mind like he wants to. But he can’t. He can feel the dirt flowing in his veins even now at the thought. Things will be bad enough in the aftermath of the morning without his own internal guilt.

 

Harry manages to stand up and as he does his eyes fall on the half-full bottle of brandy on the table before him. His head swims as he thinks about the bitter taste of it, the lightness in his bones it can provide.

 

Before he can even think properly he’s picking it up, pressing the warm glass to his chest as he goes over and mounts the stairs, tugging the edge of his shirt over his crotch as if he has anyone to hide from, as if that would take away the pure fucked-up-ness of this entire night.

 

He carries the bottle up to his room and sits cross-legged on his bed and watches as the level in the bottle drops, as his eyes blurs and his throat burns.  Disjointed poems and things he wants to scream at his boss and things he wants to scream at himself tumble off his lips as he curls up in the quilt and shakes against the cold.

\--

 

The only consolation to waking up with a piercing hangover and a twisted, nervous stomach is finding that no one else in the house is any better off.

 

Harry doesn’t even wake up until it’s almost noon, and when he manages to find the smallest break in his headache and go downstairs, he finds that Liam and Niall are draped over the couches in the living room, groaning in unison in a sound that vaguely sounds like “Morning, Harry”.

 

Louis is apparently still in his room. Thank God.

 

Harry takes a seat in one of the plush armchairs and tips his head back, rubbing his brow. Out of his squinted eyes he sees Zayn emerge from the kitchen, balancing a tray of mugs and plates.

 

“Hey, Harry,” he greets softly as he sets the tray down on the coffee table. It’s cluttered with mugs of black coffee and tea, a few tall bottles of sparkling water, toast loaded down with peanut butter and Nutella, a few stray Pop Tarts, half an industrial sized bottle of Aspirin. Hangover fuel, “Looks like you and Tommo weren’t exactly sober last night, either,”

 

“Uh…” he opens his mouth and his tongue feels thick and dry as he quietly accepts the tea Zayn’s offering him, “No. Lou…Scotch,”

 

“Ah,” Zayn picks another mug up from the tray and hands it, along with the Aspirin, to Liam, who grabs at it with twitching hands, “Makes sense,”

 

“I guess you’re the only sober one, then,”

 

“Yeah. Designated driver and all. Li deserved a few drinks, after all this, and, well, it’s Niall, can’t exactly trust him around his pints,”

 

“Fuck yourself, Malik,” Niall mumbles, “Want m’Pop Tarts”

 

“Alright, then,” Zayn sighs, handing him the plate of Pop Tarts, “Have fun,”

 

Niall takes the plate and ducks his head, diving into the pastries. Zayn lifts one of the mugs and a slice of toast off the tray, saying something about going to check on Louis, and then he’s gone.

 

Liam lifts his head, gripping his mug a little too tight as he blinks and shakes his head.

 

“I—I’m sorry about all this, boys, I really am. Shouldn’t—shouldn’t have—we should have a nice weekend, really, and I just fucked it up— “

 

“Liam,” Harry groans, a sharp pain carving a crack in his skull. He can’t hear this. Not now. Not after he drunk himself into a migraine over a man he’ll never be with. He can’t deal with hearing his friend apologize one more goddamn time over something that isn’t his fault on top of that.

 

“Stop,” he begs, “Please. Please stop apologizing. You have nothing to be sorry for,”

 

Liam opens his mouth and then just resigns to giving him a grateful smile as Harry turns away, ducking his head and sucking down his tea.

 

He faintly hears a door open and close upstairs. Louis is up.

 

He closes his eyes again and just wants to go somewhere far away.

 

\--

They go to the beach.

 

After a few hours, their headaches had cleared enough that they can actually move. Louis finally stumbled down the stairs, all muttered cursing and half-hearted glares, and the five of them pieced together what they should do with their final day. Niall reminded Liam that they had planned on going to the ocean one last time, so of course Liam went to get the keys to his dad’s old trunk and they were off.

 

Harry and Niall sit in the bed of the trunk, their knees tucked tightly to their chests as the trunk bolts along the twisty road. From the inside of the cab, Harry can hear Louis babbling, leaning over Zayn to play with the dials on the radio, and Liam snapping at them to knock it off and let him focus on the road.

 

Everything is the same, but that doesn’t change the how undeniably tired and on edge they are all now, or the fact that inside Harry feels twisted up and turned upside down.

 

“You okay?” Niall asks, bumping his knee, “You look fuckin’ miserable,”

 

“Oh,” Harry says, licking his dry lips, “I’m just tired. Last night…I drank too much,”

 

“Okay,” Niall says, narrowing his eyes. He’s not buying it, “You sure that’s it? Nothing else?”

 

Harry shakes his head, “I guess…well I guess being back here is harder than I expected it to be,”

 

Niall bobs his head, lifting his face into the pale sunlight, “Why is everyone so sad? Why does it all feel different, do you think?”

 

“Because we’re not kids anymore,”

 

Niall just shakes his head, “I just wanna have a good time, Harry. That’s all—that’s all I want. Just to have a good time with my boys, one last time,”

 

“I know,” Harry sighs and wraps an arm around Niall, pressing his temple to the knit beanie that covers Niall’s hair, “We still have time to try, Ni. We still have time,”

 

\--

The beach isn’t _really_ anything special. It’s a rail-thin strip of gritty sand bordered by a lazy ocean on one side and an intricate complex of craggy rocks on the other. Even on a beautiful summer day, the water is freezing and the gulls are loud and obnoxious. The only people crazy enough to actually go here are people who live nearby and don’t have time to travel to a decent spot.

 

Historically, this usually just meant the boys came.

 

When they arrive, they all grip their coats tighter and climb out of the trunk, moving to stand on some of the flatter rocks that rise just a few feet off the sand. The waves roll in lazy gray waves, and the only sign of life is a few rogue seabirds circling above.

 

“It’s fucking freezing,” Zayn grumbles.

 

“It’s November. And we aren’t exactly goin’ swimming,” Louis snorts, shaking his head, “Come on then,”

 

He holds out his arms and leaps off the rocks, his jacket flapping behind him. He lands with bowed legs, feet striking a cloud of grimy sand up into the air, and then turns and gives a bow to the group.

 

“When you lads are ready, I’m off to have fun,”

 

Zayn shakes his head as he watches Louis take off his boots, shrieking as he splashes his bare feet into the cold gray waves.

 

“Look at ‘im,” he says, the fond tone creeping into his voice, “What would we be without Tommo?”

 

Harry stares evenly at the man on the beach, who he still sees as the eighteen-year-old with the big mouth that had first made his heart beat too fast and made his throat constrict when he spoke.

 

What would have happened if Louis Tomlinson had never crashed his way into his life?

 

“We’d all be saner,” Harry finally says, and the group laughs weakly. Zayn claps him on the shoulder and gives Harry a long look, like he wants to say something, but instead just pulls away and jumps down onto the sand. Liam and Niall file behind him and eventually Harry slips down the rocks as well, feeling sand fill up his boots as he trudges down the shore.

 

Memories flash through his head, as always, but he’s too tired to focus on any particular one. There was the day Niall’s swim trunks had been washed away with the waves and he had to stay in the water the whole afternoon until rest of the beachgoers went home. The afternoon where Harry had laid sprawled out on the sand after a long swim and Louis and Zayn had lazily decorated his hair with broken shells and bits of seaweed. The general feeling of sand trapped underneath his nails for days and the numb feeling of feet in cold water.

 

Ahead of him, Niall is skipping in and out of the water and Liam and Zayn are glued to each other, speaking intently, their eyes crinkled tightly. He’s lost track of Louis. Typical.

 

He gets bored quickly. This place just isn’t the same without the summer sun and the laughter of his friends fooling him into thinking the thin sand and craggy rock is anything worthwhile. He wraps his coat tighter around himself, blocking out the relentless ocean wind the best he can, and trudges back towards the rocks. He just wants to hop into the trunk’s cab with the heat and radio on and wait for the rest of his friends to catch up, but the keys are buried deep in Liam’s jacket and he doesn’t feel like bothering him.

 

Instead, Harry climbs back onto one of the smaller flat rocks and stays there, looking out at the view. A few years ago, he would’ve been dying for a notepad and a pen to write down what he was seeing, what he was feeling, let this thick feeling of misery in his stomach pour into his words. Now he just stands still, fighting to keep his mind blank, swiping at his eyes that are already watering with cold.

 

“Hey. Haz. Harry,”

 

He jerks his head up and lest his hand fall away from his eyes, then blinks and looks down. Louis has found him, and is looking up at him expectantly, two hands already poised on the sides of the rock.

 

“This rock taken?”

 

“’Course not,”

 

Louis nods and then hoists himself onto Harry’s rock. He stands straight up and wobbles for a second as he positions himself off to the side, his bare feet gripping tightly onto the edge and his arms swinging in the air for balance.

 

“You can come closer,” Harry huffs, “Plenty of room and all,”

 

“Right,” Louis nods and shifts over on the rock, his feet flattening on the rock, his shoulder briefly knocking Harry’s before he moves again.

 

They stand stock still, the wind ruffling their hair and shifting it into their eyes as they watch their friends trail along the sand. After a minute, Louis ducks his head and sighs.

 

“Harry,” he speaks, “Why are you avoiding me? Did something happen?”

 

“What?” Harry swivels his head and looks at Louis with arched brows, and his friend’s face immediately crumbles.

 

“Oh, shit, I did something stupid, didn’t I? Last night? I didn’t—what did I say, Haz? You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?”

 

“Do you remember anything?”

 

“I just---flashes, really. I know you were talking about London a lot. Your ex, maybe. But I don’t remember anything else,”

 

Oh. Of course. This is typical, for Louis to not remember something after a night of drinking. He should’ve seen this coming already.

 

But he hadn’t, and so now he has to make the snap decision of whether or not to tell him the truth. That, yeah, he’d said and done a lot of stupid things. Stupid things that had wrung Harry out to dry, that he could hardly articulate because… _fuck_.

 

“Harry?” Louis’s voice comes, “What is it? Is it that bad? Jesus, what could I have— “

 

“No, Lou, it’s nothing,” Harry says, feeling the lie burn on his tongue, “I, just, I’m having some second thoughts about my job. Have been for a while. And, well, you just have me some advice last night that’s been getting me thinking about it more. That’s all,”

 

“Oh,” Louis’s mouth curls into a frown, “I—mate, you really shouldn’t take advice from me when I’m drunk, it’s just rubbish, really,”

 

“No, I know. It was you and a lot of other things. Don’t worry about it,”

 

“So are we okay?” Louis asks softly. He blinks, and his eyes seemed so big, and so blue, bluer than the ocean and the sky.

 

 _Forgive him_ , Harry’s brain whispers, _He was drunk. He didn’t mean it. He never means it. He’s your best friend. Just do it. Forgive him. You’ve forgiven him for worse._

“Yeah, Lou,” he finally relents, forcing his mouth into a smile that he hopes looks even slightly genuine, “Of course we are,”

 

“Oh, good,” Louis’s breath comes out in a rush and he laughs, “Good, good, good,”

 

He turns back to the beach and shakes his head, “God, it’s still shit out, isn’t it?”

 

Harry gives a non-committal shrug and keeps looking out, focusing on nothing in particular. A beat later, he feels his heart nearly stop, because Louis has slipped both arms around his midsection and is resting his head on Harry’s shoulder. His nose floods with the thick salt of the beach and the clean, earthy smell of Louis’s skin.

 

Harry’s throat tightens and he closes his eyes. In the distance, the waves slap the shore in time with his heart.

 

\--

 

The beginning of the end comes courtesy of a bottle of champagne.

 

It’s nearly midnight, and all of them are sprawled around the living room, their throats dry from telling too many stories and the taste of chocolate cake still lingering on their tongues from dessert. The smell of the ocean is hanging in the air even now, and although the showers were running all afternoon, there’s definitely still sand stuck under nails and buried in hair.

 

Harry’s back is pressed into the thick Persian carpet on the floor, and he has Niall’s head resting on his stomach. He keeps running his fingers over the side of his face, and his friend just scrunches his nose and lets Harry continue. Louis and Liam are perched on one of the room’s love seats, and Louis has his legs are sprawled on Liam’s lap like he has no plans of moving anytime soon. That is, until Liam physically pushes them away and stand up.

 

“Oi,” Louis huffs weakly, “Why’d you do that?”

 

“I have something for you all. One second,” Liam goes into the kitchen, and there’s the familiar sound of banging cabinets and clinking glasses. Liam emerges beat later with the stems of five slim champagne flutes clutched in one fist, and the neck of an elegant green bottle in the other.

 

They all immediately lift their heads and stand at the sight of the expensive-looking label on the side of the bottle, because Liam has really, really outdone himself this time.

 

Zayn, though, stays in the fray as they all crowd around Liam, thanking him as he pops the cork in a bubbly, messy display and then pours out the champagne, handing out the glasses. He reaches Zayn last, and they stare each other down as he accepts the glass, swallowing thickly.

 

“Li,” he hisses, “What is this?”

 

“What?” he asks, shrugging and setting the bottle down on the coffee table, “It’s a special occasion,”

 

“That bottle costs eighty pounds. You know that,”

 

“Yes, I do. Don’t worry about it,” Liam raises his flute and nods to the groups, “Cheers to us,”

 

“To us,” they repeat and the flutes touch mouths, but Zayn refuses to drink, still looking on edge.

 

“Liam, you know we can’t afford this,” he says softly, “You promised you wouldn’t splurge so much this weekend, we had a budget…”

 

“’We’?” Louis cuts in, laughing “What, you two sharing a bank account of something now?”

 

“We might as well be, since _I_ live here too,”

 

“Wait,” Harry says, and sets down his glass, “You…you live together? And here?”

 

“Well, now that it’s on the table,” Zayn says, cutting his eyes to Liam, who looks a bit panicked, “I guess I can say that I haven’t been honest with you boys. So, the truth is, I didn’t come here this weekend. I’m not visiting. I live here. I’ve lived here for a year,”

 

Harry blinks, thinking about to all he knows about Zayn, and he’s a bit surprised when almost nothing comes out of his memory. Out of all of them, Zayn has been the one who had evaded him the most in the last couple years. Harry knows he’d been in the US for at least a year working for a charity that taught the arts to inner city kids, but since Zayn went off the grid for a little while he honestly doesn’t even know when he’d gotten back, let alone where he’d been living.

 

Actually, now that he thinks about it, he’d just assumed Zayn was back in their hometown. He’d never even asked if he’d gone somewhere else.

 

Zayn is twirling his still untouched champagne flute between his long fingers, and slowly piecing together the rest of his story.

 

“After I came back from the States, I needed a place to stay, and I called Li when I was still living out of a hotel, asked him if he knew another place I could crash. The place was for sale at that point, but Liam said I could stay here as long as I looked after things and got out when the relator was taking people through. So I took the deal, thought it would be a few weeks at most. But then I got a job at the school down in the village. They needed a music teacher,” he shrugs, “And so I’ve been here ever since,”

 

“And. Liam is here too, now?” Louis asks, glancing between the two of them, “Thought you had your own place, mate,”

 

“Not anymore,” Liam admits, “I—rent became a bit of an issue. So I moved back here,”

 

“What, trouble getting cases?”

 

“Well, it’s tough to get away when your fuckin’ firm fires you,” Liam says flatly.

Harry’s hand stops halfway through raising his glass to his lips, “Are you—but how?”

 

Liam is one of the smartest people he’s ever met, and he has a degree in Law from Cambridge. There’s no possible way that he could get fired.

 

But, then again, there was also a time when he thought it wasn’t possible for his parents could die so young, either.

 

“They said I was distracted, not preparing my cases well enough…” Liam begins, then viciously shakes his head, “Fuck, and now I’m clipping into my savings, my inheritance just to buy food and pay the bills to keep the water running,”

 

“Which is why we were supposed to be on a budget,” Zayn cuts in.

 

“Hey, leave us out of your lover’s quarrels,” Louis holds up his hands in mock defense, but Zayn’s expression only darkens more, and Liam begins fidgeting with his hands.

 

“Now that,” Zayn sighs, “That’s an interesting choice of words, Tommo,”

 

“Z,” Liam chokes out, his eyes flicking between Zayn and the rest of the group “Don’t,”

 

“What? It is,” Zayn draws out, “Now that we’re fucking and all,”

 

That’s what does it. Liam’s body freezes at the words, and the whole room does, too. They’re so quiet Harry can hear the heating whistle through the ventilation.

 

“ _What_?” Niall finally whispers.

 

“Yeah,” Liam confirms, although he’s looking straight at the ground, not even meeting Zayn’s eyes “I was lonely, okay? We both were. And I never thought I swung that way, but, here we are,”

 

He’s only met with new silence. Normally, a new relationship in their circle would call for another round of champagne. But it’s not about that. It’s the fact that almost nothing goes unsaid between them. Certainly not something like this.

 

Louis blinks and then he’s leaving the room, mumbling, “I need air,”

 

The door out to the porch slams loudly a second later, and Liam winces.

 

“Right,” Niall says, “I—I’m going out too,” he shakes his head, “Honestly, you two—Jesus Christ, I can’t even do this. I can’t. I can’t,”

 

He turns back around, “You know, I’m happy for you. I am. I would’ve been happy for you no matter what. But this…we don’t fucking keep secrets from each other. Especially not things like this,”

 

“We’re sorry, Ni,” Zayn says softly, his hand reaching out to trace Liam’s, “It’s just been…things haven’t been good lately, we didn’t think…”

 

“Yeah. I can fucking see that. Too bad I still thought all my friends weren’t a bunch of miserable bastards now. But I guess no one wanted to tell me that, either,”

 

He huffs again and then he’s leaving, another door slamming behind him.

 

Harry is left alone with two of his best friends, who are looking at him with wide eyes, like they expect him to storm away, too. But he doesn’t. He stays put, at least for another second, and looks between the two of them.

 

“Well,” he finally says, “Guess I’m not the token gay friend after all,”

 

\--

Harry slams the screen door harder than he needs too, letting out a long breath that stings his lungs with cold. He can hear the rolling of tires on gravel and the overly loud gurgle of an engine coming from the other side of the house, and he knows Niall must be driving into town, letting off some steam. Luckily, the sound of Liam and Zayn’s voices behind him have faded enough that he’s now greeted with quiet.

 

Well, quiet and Louis.

 

The other man is sprawled over the steps of the back porch, his nose already bitten pink with cold and a cigarette clamped between his fingers, the glowing cherry cutting through the hazy dark. He twists his neck around to look at Harry, and blinks his eyes slowly.

 

“Oh,” Louis croaks, “Hey,”

 

“Hi,” Harry says, making a move towards the steps, “There room for me?”

 

Louis snorts and shifts his body slightly off to the side, even though he hardly took up that much room to begin with, “For you, Hazza, always,”

 

“Thanks,” he mutters, easing himself down on the step. He rests his folded hands on his knees and swallows thickly as he looks out at the yard, the inky outline of the bare trees standing out against the star-filled sky.

 

This is his last night here, ever, and this is how he’s spending it. Fantastic.

 

“Do you have another one of those?” he finally asks Louis, motioning to the cig in his hand. Louis just glances down and then back at Harry, raising an eyebrow before wordlessly pulling a cardboard carton out of his jacket pocket and offering it to him.

 

“Thanks,” Harry mumbles, pulling one of the sticks out and putting it in his mouth. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Louis strike a flame on a lighter and he leans towards him, the end of the cig wobbling as he pushes it into the flame. The smoke nips harshly at his throat as he inhales and he coughs, pulling the cigarette out of his mouth and clamping it between two fingers as he presses his palm over his mouth.

 

“Easy,” Louis chuckles, pounding him on the back, “Go slow, love,”

 

“Whatever,” Harry stares down at the stick in his hand and groans as he presses the lit tip into the deck and then tosses it into the yard.

 

“Don’t litter in your friend’s home, Harold,”

 

“This place is fucking doomed anyways,”

 

“Well, it’s a point,”

 

Louis pauses and drags on his own cigarette before extinguishing it against the steps and tossing it out into the yard to join Harry’s. He tilts his head back, blinking up at the stars, and when he begins to speak again Harry expects some bullshit filler about how nice it is out here or how crazy it is back in the house. But that’s not what happens.

 

“Harry,” he says instead, “I can ask you something, yeah?”

 

“Of course,”

 

Louis takes a small breath and Harry shifts his body so he could look at him, give him his full attention. Louis glances in his direction and laces his fingers together, bouncing one knee as he begins to speak.

 

“When did you know you…that you were into men?”

 

Harry blinks. That’s not exactly what he was expecting, but he’s not exactly in the position to withhold anything from his friends, especially not after what just happened.

 

“I, uh, I guess always. Always just noticed the boys in school more, you know? Never saw anything wrong with it until all the others started talking about girls,”

 

“Did you ever…I don’t know, try anything with girls?”

 

“Once,” he admits, “Kissed a girl in my class when I was fourteen and that convinced me to never kiss another one again,”

 

“But was it just a bad kiss or…”

 

“Lou,” Harry sighs, pushing back his hair, “She tried to get me to touch her boob. I nearly started crying,”

 

Louis tips back his head and cackles, “Well I guess that’s one way to know for sure,”

 

“Mmhm,” Harry nods, “Can’t believe you never heard that story, for how long I’ve known you,”

 

“I never asked. Bit shitty of me, not to ask you more things,”

 

“Don’t worry,” he says, “Why the sudden interest?”

 

“I don’t know,” Louis sighs, “To be honest with you, I’ve been thinking about this stuff a lot lately,”

 

“Have you,” Harry gets out, despite the fact he can feel his throat grow thick. He tries to keep his voice level, but he feels his chest hitch with familiar false hope. Only this time, after so long, it might not be so false.

 

Louis just shrugs, but the gesture is stiff and anything but casual, “Yeah. Started maybe last year. Hadn’t gotten laid in a while, you know how it goes, and I started thinking why I always had such shit luck with girls. Because the thing is, Haz, I don’t quite know if I’ve ever really liked any of my girlfriends, as shit as that sounds,”

 

“No, surely you have,” Harry breaks in, “What about that one…Isabelle? You brought her here to meet us one weekend. It was almost World War Three, you bringing a girl onto our turf,”

 

“Ah, she was…alright, I guess,”

 

“Had to have been more than alright for you to bring her to one of our weekends. Shit, Lou, you said yourself that was a bigger deal than meeting your parents. Niall thought you were on the verge of proposing,”

 

“Well, that’s the thing,” he laughs drily, “I couldn’t stand that girl. Tried to break up with her three times, actually, but could never get the nerve up. And she was lovely, you know? Sweet, and funny, and all…we were great. There was nothing fucking wrong with us. And yet I spent every second of our time together trying to find something wrong, so I could end it, because I just felt trapped with her,”

 

He does that stiff-shouldered shrug again, “I guess ‘Sorry love, you can’t get on with my friends, then we aren’t going to work’, was just an easy way out,”

 

Harry doesn’t know how he’s supposed to process this. There’s still that voice in the back of his head, that horrible, nagging voice, telling him that Louis is just bored, or fucking with him, or is just pulling out random reasons for all his failed relationships.

 

And yet. Louis is so stiff, and he keeps looking away and playing with his hands, and Harry knows him enough to know that he’s serious.

 

“So. You think that means you like men,”

 

“Well I don’t rightly know, do I,” Louis sighs, “I guess I never considered it an option. But now this thing with Li and Zayn, how they just figured this just out…I guess it got me thinking again,”

 

There’s a pause, and Harry has no goddamn clue how to fill it. He’s actually been in Louis’s situation. He’s just always known what he likes. Even being in a small town full of straight kids couldn’t stop him from coming to terms with that.

 

He hasn’t had the string of girlfriends and flings Louis has cycled through over the years, hasn’t had anything to cover himself up or make him second-guess himself.

 

Coming out had been hard, but at least he’d never had to do it to himself.

 

“I’ve never actually kissed a lad before, you know,” Louis’s voice breaks through the silence, soft and hesitant and covered in nervous laughter, “Not even when I was drunk or anything. At least that I remember,”

 

“Okay,” Harry says blankly.

 

“I think maybe it’d be good for me to try, you know?” Louis continues, “I mean, maybe I’ll never know for sure if I don’t…”

 

“Maybe,” Harry agrees, leaning forward and hugging his knees.

 

“Um,” Louis coughs awkwardly and Harry glances over at at his friend, whose eyebrows are raised, cautiously, his eyes wide and his mouth pressed tightly, waiting.

 

Oh. _Oh._

 

Harry hugs his knees closer to his chest and feels his throat catch.

 

“Do you want…” he fumbles, “Do you want me to kiss you, Louis?”

 

Louis blinks, and when he speaks his voice is like a feather being drawn across exposed skin, impossibly soft and enough to make Harry’s stomach lurch, “Would you?”

 

“Is that a good idea?”

 

“I dunno,” Louis licks his lips, “You’re my friend, you’re here, and I need to know what it feels like. Soon. Now,”

 

“Um,” Harry unfurls his tongue, rubbing the inside of his bottom lip. Before he can even think, the words were coming out, “Okay. I’ll do it,”

 

He sets his hand in the spot next to him on the step and pats it, signaling Louis to move over, until their knees are knocking and he can smell the smoke curling off of Louis’s clothes.

 

“So what do we do now?” Louis ventures.

 

“Not exactly your first kiss, is it?”

 

“Well…no,”

 

“Then just do it like usual, alright?”

 

“Alright,”

 

And then the smell of smoke jams itself into Harry’s nostrils, and he feels soft hair against his temple, a hand on his knee, and pair of lips on his.

 

Louis tastes like a paradox. That’s Harry’s first thought, and he scolds himself for the pure _weirdness_ of it, but… _he does_. He tastes like gas station cigarettes and black tie champagne, and those are just the tastes he can name. His hand comes up to rest loosely on Louis’s knee and the other man awkwardly brings a hand up to cover his, a couple fingers brushing Harry’s wrist. He thinks he can feel Louis’s heartbeat pounding through his coat, but it could just be his own. They’re close enough he can’t even tell.

 

Louis’s mouth stills and then pulses with awkward movement, as if he’s surfacing and realizing what he’s doing, but he doesn’t pull away. Harry presses his hand harder into his knee and tries to guide his friend, gently touching his jaw and moving his mouth so their lips slot together at a different angle. Louis makes some sort of noise and a flash of fear runs through Harry, that he went too far, but they’re still kissing, somehow, so he realizes it must have been something good.

 

Louis grasps the back of his neck and tilts his head, and his lips slide down, catching on Harry’s bottom lip, tickling the edge of his chin. A sliver of cold night air slips into his mouth and chills his chest before Louis’s mouth is back on him fully, and warmth rushes in to replace the cold.

 

_Oh. Oh. Oh--_

 

He blinks. His lips feel swollen and wet and…empty. He realizes a beat late that Louis’s pulled away, and his mouth is shining and brilliant pink, pouting open. His eyes are wide, and he looks scared and confused and a dozen other things that just aren’t good.

 

“Was that okay?” Harry asks, and Louis just blinks and looks away.

 

“Ah—“ Louis shifts awkwardly, sliding his body away from Harry and pinching his knees together, pulling his body in on itself, his cheeks flushing as he glances down at his lap, “More than okay, looks like,”

 

“Ah—you hard?”

 

Louis keeps his head down and mumbles, “Maybe,”

 

“Well, that’s...that’s normal, I guess. Doesn’t have to mean anything,”

 

Only Harry’s kind of hard, too, and _that_ definitely does mean something.

 

“Right. Of course,” Louis says, and Harry expects him to laugh but his voice is just blank.

 

“So? Does that answer anything for you?”

 

“Well…” Louis fumbles, and this time he does laugh, but it’s sharp and flat and all wrong, “Thing is, Haz, that—I felt something. I did. I just dunno if it’s because I like men or just…you,”

 

Harry can physically feel the air pausing in his throat on its way to his lungs, and he thinks he might actually choke to death, because Louis has said the one thing that can make his world physically stop.

 

“ _What_?”

 

His voice is tight and pained, and Louis immediately begins shaking his head, his shoulders hunched up to his ears, and for the first time in eight years, he’s speechless.

 

“I…thing is, I think I do fancy you a little bit…” he rambles, “I mean, can’t blame me now, can you. fuckin’ look at you, mate, you’re gorgeous, you are, anyone can see that…”

 

“Stop. Stop,” Harry gasps, “You—explain. How long--” he can’t even finish, his throat is too tight. But at least Louis still answers him. Barely.

 

“I…for a while, now, I think. Started the first couple years we were here. Wasn’t anything at first, really. You were my friend, like all the other lads. But...sometimes I’d look at you and think, ‘Shit, Harry’s pretty, isn’t he? He’s a good one, isn’t he? The bloke that ends up with him—he’s lucky, really’. Never thought that about the others. Never thought that about anyone else, really. Definitely not my girlfriends. At least…not in the way I thought about you,”

 

Without warning, a memory flashes through Harry’s mind, faded and blurry, of one spring weekend five years ago, when Isabella had been here with them. They were out in the yard, all of them trying to ignore this girl standing off to the side, breaking into their space, into their bond. Louis had an arm wrapped her shoulder, and he leaned over, kissing her temple. When he turned his head back, he caught Harry’s eyes, and he ducked, his cheeks burning as he realized he’d been caught.

 

But not before Harry saw the blank look in Louis’s eyes, the straight line of his mouth, the pinched, pained line between his eyebrows.

 

The look of a boy that had every reason to be happy but wasn’t.

 

Because he wanted something else.

 

And just like that, Harry is standing up, stomping up the steps and towards the back door, “I have to go,”

 

“Harry? Harry, no, please, wait,” Louis speaks, and Harry feels a small but powerful hand on his wrist, pulling him back, “Just stop, will you? I need to think this through, is all— “

 

“But you’ve had time, Louis,” Harry swallows thickly, “You had eight fucking years,”

 

“But I didn’t— “

 

“You didn’t what?” Harry turns and tears his hand away from Louis’s grip, “You didn’t know you liked me? Because you just told me you knew. And you spent the last eight years bloody flirting with me, too— “

 

“I didn’t do that,”

 

“You—you didn’t do that,” Harry repeats, “So you just spent eight years holding my hand and kissing my cheek and telling me I was gorgeous and just thought it meant nothing? You never did that with anyone else, you know. Just me,”

 

“So maybe I did! Maybe I liked you, maybe I wanted to be close to you. Why does it matter?

 

Harry throws his arms out and his eyes blur as he snaps, “Because fuck all, Louis, I fancied you, too. More than that, sometimes I thought you was in love with you. Sometimes I still think that,”

 

Louis purses his lips, and Harry can feel the color drain out of his face, see the wheels clicking his head.

 

“Well, that’s good, isn’t it?” he finally asks, his voice trembling, “We both know now, we can try to make this work…”

 

“No,” Harry cuts in, “We can’t. We can’t do anything, it’s too late for that. _I_ can’t do this anymore,” he shakes his head, “You make me—you make me feel too much, do you understand? I can’t fucking be around you, and I can’t be away from you, and so I just exist in this limbo of ignoring you. Only that doesn’t fucking work either,”

 

“What--Harry, I don’t understand,” Louis says softly.

 

“Of course you don’t. You knew you could come on to me and you might have a chance, because you knew I wasn’t straight. But you…I never thought I had a fucking chance with you, and that ruined me. _You ruined me_ ,” Harry snorts and narrows his eyes, and he can feel his next words twisting in his mouth, going for the kill shot, “Sometimes I wished we’d never met, I really do,”

 

He doesn’t even have time to watch Louis’s face crumble, because he’s already turning and going back inside. He slams the door excessively loud and Louis apparently gets the memo, because he doesn’t try to follow him. Harry drags his hands roughly through his hair and his face, pressing his steepled hands to his mouth. God, he wishes he had a car. He wants to get out of here now, tonight.

 

But he has no way of leaving. He doesn’t even think Niall is back yet, and honestly, it’s a mixed bag of whether or not he’d agree. On one hand, he’d been damn pissed when he left. On the other, it’s Niall. Even in the worst of times he wouldn’t fully abandon his friends, not without a proper goodbye.

 

So Harry drags himself into the living room where their half-full champagne flutes are still innocently sitting on the coffee table, and prepares to go to the stairs.

 

He pauses when he hears a sound—wet hiccups and a soft voice—and turns.

 

Liam and Zayn are standing in the pale light of the kitchen doorway. Liam is completely collapsed against Zayn’s wiry body, his head crushed into his shoulder and his arm cobra-squeezing Zayn’s waist. He’s crying. Hard.

 

“S’alright, Li, s’alright,” Zayn is mumbling, running his fingers along the back of Liam’s head, “It’s…it’s okay, yeah? It’s okay,”

 

He closes his eyes, his mouth hard, and Harry can see another entire year in that expression. A year of loving a man who’s broken, of trying to put him back together and eventually settling for just propping him up.

 

When Zayn finally opens his eyes, he glances over and blinks at Harry.

 

“It’s okay,” Harry mouths to him and Zayn just smiles gently, nods and turns away, his shoulders dropping as he sighs and holds Liam closer.

 

Harry turns away then, letting them have their moment as he climbs the stairs.

 

At least some of them could do this love thing right.

 

\--

None of his mornings this time around have been particularly good, but the last one is by far the worst.

 

Harry wakes up without much fan fare—his eyes open suddenly, and he isn’t tired nor well rested—he’s just awake, and lays still, staring up at the ceiling and letting his thoughts roll in slowly, like the waves before a hurricane.

 

Two of his best friends are fucking, Niall is pissed over not knowing about it, the man he’s loved for years was apparently in love with him, too, and now this weekend is in shambles, with barely any hope of ending on a good note. Fuck.

 

Eventually he lifts his head off the pillow, rubs his eyes and pushes away the hair that has matted itself to his cheek. He’s awake and has no reason to stay in bed, other than to maybe torture himself a little more, so he gets up, finds his suitcase, and rips open every drawer, pulling out his clothes and dumping them onto the bed so he can pack them.

 

Halfway through putting everything away he considers texting Niall, seeing if he’s willing to break his every moral and just sneak out early with him, when there’s a knock at his door.

 

Harry braces himself and goes over, breathing out a sigh of relief when he sees the only person he can deal with right now on the other side of the door.

 

“Hey, Z,” he greets, immediately going back to his bed as Zayn follows him into the space, “What brings you here?”

 

“Well, Li’s still asleep, and everyone else is refuses to get of their rooms. So I’m holding down the fort, I guess,” Zayn holds up the two coffee mugs in his hands and hands off one of them to Harry. He sets his own down on the bedside and then motions to the bed, “Do you mind if I...”

 

“Ah, no,” Harry shifts his suitcase off to one corner of the mattress, leaving some empty space, “Go ahead,”

 

“Ah, you’re a good egg,” Zayn sighs, falling onto the bed and flopping onto his back, closing his eyes, “God, no offense, Haz, but I can’t wait for you boys to get out of our house,”

 

Harry just snorts and tucks his last jumper into his bag, “None taken,”

 

“It’s just—“ Zayn runs this hand over his face, “I wanted this to be good as much as the rest of you. More so, even. Liam’s just been so bad, and the only time I saw him really perk up was getting ready for this. He was so in the zone he didn’t have time to mope around or anything,”

 

Zayn rolls over on his stomach and blinks at Harry, “Did ya know—he does this thing—he just stands in his parent’s room sometimes and stares at the walls. Does it for hours. It’s fucking scary, really,”

 

“Did you ever call a doctor? He sounds really depressed,”

 

“I’m trying. Most of the good ones are pretty far away but I’m working on it,” he dips his head and draws a circle onto the quilt with a finger, “Actually, I’m thinking ahead, what’s gonna happen when we finally get rid of this place. I’m looking at just finishing this semester at the school, then going back to do work for that charity again. It’s based in London, so we’d probably move and be close to you, actually. Looking for flats for us and everything. And then maybe Li will let me touch his resume, update it a bit,”

 

Harry just shakes his head, zipping up his bag, “You really love him, don’t you?”

 

Zayn just nods, his voice painfully honest, “Yeah, Harry. I really, really do,”

 

“You still should’ve told us, you know,”

 

“I know. It was just—it was hard. And to be fair it wasn’t anything formal. Just, one night he had a nightmare, I came to his room, and then I just never left,” Zayn shrugs, “Is it crazy if I say Liam’s it for me? I mean, he’s got enough baggage for the both of us, but— “

 

“Well then it’s good you’re there to help him carry it,” Harry cuts it, “I’m happy for you guys, I am,”

 

“Thanks,” Zayn sits up and rubs the back of his head, ruffling his hair back into place, and then jabs a finger at him, “Speaking of relationships, you and Lou need to figure your shit out,”

 

Harry freezes, his hands pressing into the worn canvas on his bag, “What do you— “

 

“Harry. Darling. You are the worst actor I’ve ever met. I’m pretty sure I knew you liked Louis before you did,”

 

Damn it. He really can’t get anything past him.

 

“Right. Well, you don’t have to worry about that anymore,”

 

“What? Because you two kissed and then definitely did not make up?”

 

Harry just blinks and Zayn shakes his head.

 

“You came in with your lips swollen like you just got fucked, and then Louis came in the same way like ten minutes later. Only he was kind of crying. So, yeah, I think I can figure out what happened,”

 

“You don’t get it,” Harry mutters, because that’s his only means of self defense. God, why can’t his friends be less fucking observant? “He—said you _liked_ me, Z. Has for years. And he’s strung me along…”

 

“Okay,” Zayn says, “And now you’re stringing yourself along the rest of the way?”

 

“It’s not like that,”

 

“Of course it is,” he cuts in, “Listen, Harry, you two…you have something special, romantic or not. So I’m not letting you leave until you at least can be friends again,”

 

Harry squints at the coffee he left on the bedside table, squinting harshly at the little cartoon daisies dotting the rim.

 

“I can’t believe you bribed me with caffeine just to lecture me about my love life,”

 

“I just want to make sure everyone’s doing alright. That’s all,”

 

“Well, thanks, I guess,”

 

“Anytime,” Zayn slides off the bed and pats him on the shoulder, “I’m going to go check on my boy. Breakfast in a bit?”

 

“M’not hungry,”

 

“Alright, mate, alright,” Zayn pulls his hand away and shakes his head, scooping up his mug on the way out the door, “You better fucking talk to him,”

 

Harry closes his eyes and feels the resistance drain out of his body.

“Okay, okay, I will, I promise,”

 

\--

 

When Harry finally leaves his room, he doesn’t stop moving.

 

He needs straight down the steps and into the front hall, letting the wood lacquer and maple scented candle smells fill his nose one last time before he walks out onto the porch and into the driveway. He doesn’t bother to go into the other rooms, or into the kitchen where his friend undoubtedly are. He’s not going back inside. Not ever again. And he’s fine with that.

 

The sun is rising bright and high over the trees, washing the cold air with light. It’s cold, as always, up the sunlight fills it with the slight, elusive promise of warmth. It’s a beautiful day, really. But all Harry can think about is how it’s Monday now, and he’s taking on a vacation day for this, and how he still has a promise to keep before he goes.

 

Niall’s car is locked when he gets there—of course—so he sets his suitcase against the bumper and then leans heavily against the car door, wondering how long he’s going to have to wait before everyone else files outside.

 

Apparently not long.  

 

He hears the front door slam behind him and he glances over his shoulder, his body seizing in spite of itself when he sees his unfulfilled promise heading towards him. Louis’s bundled in the same tan coat he arrived in, but he’s not carrying a bag. He’s not leaving yet.

 

“Hi,” he says as he approaches Harry. He keeps his distance, standing by his own car just a few feet away, “Everyone else is inside. Apparently Liam and Zayn wanted to sit Niall down, make sure he’s okay. But I don’t think they’ll have trouble, when I left he was ready to pick out their wedding present,”

 

“They didn’t think we’d need that chat?”

 

“Zayn said he talked to you. And really, I’m fine. Just…my own shit got in the way,” at the mention of last night, he grows quiet, and looks down, “Harry, can we please just—talk? I don’t want to leave here like this,”

 

Harry excepts to feel something—maybe another flare of anger—but there’s nothing. He’s just tired, really. Zayn’s reminder rings in his ears, but at this point it’s just redundant. He realizes he needs to do this for himself, too. And if Louis came out here without any probing, then he must really need it, too.

 

“I guess we can.  But, look, I need some answers,” he finally says, “So if I ask you something, will you tell me?”

 

“I don’t know if you’ll like it or not,”

 

“It doesn’t matter. Not anymore,”

 

Louis looks away and then back at him, his tongue pushing nervously on his lip, “Okay. What’s first?”

 

“When exactly did you know?” Harry asks, “That you liked me, I mean,”

 

“Jesus,” Louis huffs out, and leans his body against his car, “Um. I don’t think I really knew for the first couple years, really. Just thought of you as a friend. I mean, I thought you were pretty sometimes, but, wasn’t too aware of it at that point,”

 

“Okay,” Harry says. That’s…better, he guesses.

 

“The third year …something happened then. I guess with your growth spurt and all I started to notice you more, and it wasn’t like, little moments I could brush away. It was a lot. Christmas, though, that’s what really did it. When you wrote me that thing for my birthday,”

 

“Oh,”

 

“I just…it was like a dream, you know? I wake up and there’s this boy, this fit boy, at my door, giving me a love poem, and I just cracked inside. No going back,”

 

“It wasn’t a love poem,”

 

“Christ, come off it,” Louis rolls his eyes, “You talked about my thighs in one line, you weren’t fucking subtle. Might as well have written in, “I love you, now fuck me,’”

 

“I did,” he mumbles, and Louis raises his eyebrows, “There were a few ‘I’m in love with you’s’ in the first draft. They got cut out, obviously,”

 

“That’s cute,”

 

“Shut up. Okay. So the poem is what did it. But that was…what, five, six years ago? What took you so long to tell me after that?”

 

“I don’t know, to be honest,” Louis says softly, “I just…I was figuring my own shit out. It was a lot of going in and out, of thinking I was one thing and then convincing myself I was another. I didn’t want to drag you into that,”

 

He swallows and kicks a rock at his feet, “I wish I had a better reason for you. But…that’s it. I just couldn’t admit it to myself, even when I knew there was nothing really wrong with me. I knew I would be accepted, and I would be fine, but just…I had this idea of who I was, and I didn’t want to admit to myself I was anything different. Does that make me awful?”

 

Harry sighs, the cold biting his mouth, and closes his eyes. He can’t fight that. Yeah, some stuff Louis’s done to him in the past went beyond teasing, it cut right through him at times. But he doesn’t know if he can compare their two pains, can’t hold them up side by side and see who wins in the game of hurt. They’re too different. And it’s pointless.

 

“No,” Harry tells him, “It doesn’t,”

 

“I still fucked you over. A lot,”

 

“Yeah. You did. But I don’t know if I have the energy to be mad at you anymore,”

 

Louis doesn’t react to that, just silently bobs his head and lets the silence stretch between them. When he speaks again, he’s so quiet Harry is forced to move closer just to hear him.

 

“I was jealous of you, I really was. I was so mad, sometimes, that I wasn’t brave enough to be at home with myself like you were,”

 

“I’m not that brave, you know,” Harry says, and Louis furrows his brows, making Harry rush on, “You know how I cut my hair, right? I did it right after my interview for _Grammar_. The editor said my writing had potential but he had hesitations. Because of my age, apparently. But he kept looking at my hair, and I don’t know, Lou, I needed a job. So I cut it just to work with those assholes,”

 

“Harry— “

 

He shakes his head and he rushes on, feeling stupid, petty excuses tumble out of his mouth, because he can’t let Louis think of him like that, he can’t.

 

“One time I went out to a club and this guy asked for my number and I panicked and left the whole damn place because I was scared of saying no. There’s this shortcut to get to my flat from my office but I never take it because there’s this fucking terrifying statue of a demon or something along the way and it freaks me out too much. Last month there was a mouse in my flat and I was two hours late to work because I was afraid I was going to step on it or something when I finally got out of bed. I let my best friend fight who he was, alone, for eight years because I was too caught up in my own head to fucking ask how he was doing. I— “

 

He gasps sharply, stopping, because Louis strides towards him and claps him hard on the shoulders, his bare hands twisting into the fabric of his coat. Harry exhales, the thick white air swirling in front of him, briefly obscuring Louis’s soft smile.

 

“I’m not brave, Louis, I’m not,” he finally gets out.

 

“Harry,” Louis whispers, “You are the bravest person I’ve ever fucking met,”

 

“I wish I could have helped you,” he admits, “I wish I could have helped you figure it out,”

 

“It wasn’t your battle to fight, love,”

 

He unlatches his hands from Harry’s shoulders and slides them down his arms, his thumbs finally burying themselves in the crooks of his elbows. Louis rocks on his feet, occasionally balancing on his toes, like he wants to lean closer but can’t quite make up his mind.

 

“Harry,” he finally says, “I’m still serious, you know, about wanting us to work out,”

 

“Really,”

 

He doesn’t mean for it to come out so flat, but…he’s thought about a moment like this for eight years, and in all that time he never thought about what he would do if it actually came true.

 

“Yeah,” Louis continues, unfazed, “Actually, I think I’d like it if we went back together,”

 

“What? To my place? To London?” Harry raises his eyebrows, “You have a _job_ , Louis. You have a life and—“

 

“Well, that’s just the thing. There’s nothing really left for me in Oxford. I just finished a show at the theater, and all I have have now is a job in a shit bar and I figure there are plenty of shit bars in London I can work for,”

 

“But—what about your flat? Your acting? Your—you have friends there, don’t you,”

 

“Rent’s down next week, and I never quite got around to making friends there. Bit depressing, really,” he shrugs, “Besides, I think it’s time for me to move past the acting. It was fine for a while. But I think I’d like to try something else now,”

 

“What would that be, exactly?”

 

“I dunno. Gonna figure it out,”

 

Harry frowns, thinking it over. He’s covered the bases. There’s no reason they couldn’t…

 

“Harold,” Louis sighs, “You know, you can tell me if you don’t want me to come with you,”

 

“No, I do,” Harry says a little too quickly, and holy shit, he does. He really, really, does, “It’s just…this is kind of happening fast, I’m sorry,”

 

“You’ve waited eight years,” Louis reminds him, “I’d say it’s anything but fast,”

 

Harry shakes his head, a smile threatening to overtake him, and lets one rogue worry push it’s way into his brain: What if he’s waited all this time, and it’s not even worth it?

 

“What’s going to happen to us, though?” he whispers, “Are we just going to burn out? Are we going to hate each other again after this?”

 

Louis smiles and it almost cracks his heart in half, looking at him, “I don’t know. But I still want to give it a try. I owe you that,”

 

“So you’re coming to London. To my home. Because you think we should date,”

 

Louis bobs his head, “Only if you’ll have me,”

 

Harry feels the smile finally win, and he’s pressing his forehead into Louis’s shoulders, bringing his arms up to squeeze him, “Of course I will,”

 

Louis is smiling, and then laughing, and then he’s rocking forward on his toes again, only this time he doesn’t stop or move back, but keeps moving forward, until his mouth is pressing on Harry’s.

 

Harry closes his eyes and pushes his mouth forward, rounding out his lips and grabbing onto Louis’s coat, pulling him towards him by his waist. There’s no voice in the back of his head telling him to slow down or be careful, no fear that this will all be over again when they pull away.

 

“I’m sorry,” Louis rushes out the second their lips break contact, “I just—I wanted to make up for last night and everything— “

 

“Shh,” Harry hushes him, “It’s okay. It’s more than okay,”

 

He pulls Louis’s arms off of his arms, frowning at the cold, bright pink tips of his bares fingers. He presses Louis’s uncovered hands between his gloved ones, then brings them up to his mouth to blow air onto them, rubbing his fingers roughly to thaw them.

 

“You really should wear your gloves, Lou,”

 

Louis sighs and collapses against him, his head nestling into his shoulder, “Shut your mouth,”

 

They stand like that, with Harry’s arms wrapped tightly around Louis’s narrow shoulders and Louis’s mouth pressing to the top of his chest, until the world breaks them apart. The front door slams, paired with a chatter of voices, Zayn’s raising above the rest.

 

“Oh, thank God!”

 

They break apart, although Louis still grips onto his wrist even when they aren’t hugging anymore, and turn to see the rest of their friends heading down onto the driveway. Niall is jogging in front, his hands full with a suitcase in one hand and a guitar case that almost certainly contains Daisy in the other. Zayn and Liam linger behind and have their fingers linked as they walk. Zayn locks his eyes with Harry and holds up his free hand, waving, “So looks like you talked,”

 

“Yeah,” Harry says, glancing over at the man next to him, “You could say that,”

“You in love or just friends?”

 

“Z,” Liam whispers, bumping his hand into Zayn’s side, “Don’t,”

 

“No, it’s fine,” Harry says, “Um, the former?”

 

“Oh, hell yes!” Niall claps his hands and points to Liam, “Payno, you owe me ten pounds,”

 

“Did you miss the part where I’m literally homeless?”

 

“Ah. Right. Sorry,”

 

Liam just shakes his head and nods towards Harry and Louis, “Congratulations, you two. Now, seriously, circle up, all of you,”

 

They all shift slightly to form a less-than perfect circle in the driveway, and Liam ducks his head, his boots digging through the gravel, as they all look towards him.

 

“We’ve had a god damn run here,” he begins, “And…I just want you all to know this isn’t the end. We won’t have the house anymore soon, but…the five of us…we’ll always be there. We just gotta find a new place to be together, that’s all,”

 

“We’ll find one,” Zayn cuts in, and Harry doesn’t miss how he squeezes Liam’s hand, “We will,”

 

There’s a silence then, and it’s like there should be words to fill it, stories or memories or finally wishes, but…everything’s already been said. So they collapse on one another, offering hugs and long goodbyes. Liam gives Harry a tight squeeze and another congratulations, while Zayn pecks his cheek and whispers, “You did good. Now don’t fuck this up,” before pulling away and going over to presumably give Louis the same message.

 

Niall comes over next but instead of hugging him he just claps him roughly on the back and hitches a thumb towards his car, “Alright, Styles, get your shit in the back, we’ve gotta get on the road,”

 

“Oh,” Harry turns towards Louis, who’s already done with his goodbyes and is leaning against the driver’s side of his car, watching the two of them, “Actually, Ni, I’m heading home with Louis,”

 

“Really,” Niall states, looking in the other man’s direction, “You two headin’ to Oxford?”

 

“London. I have a new roommate, apparently,”

 

“Unbelievable,” Niall smiles and shrugs, “Your loss. And to think I was going to let you choose the music on the way home,”

 

“Yeah, too bad,” Harry laughs, and wraps Niall in a hug, “Thanks for the drive up. And everything else,”

 

“Of course,” Niall pulls away and shoves his shoulders, “Now go on, you two have got a long drive ahead of you,”

 

Harry just nods, goes to pick up his suitcase, and then heads towards Louis’s car, throwing his bag in the backseat and then ducking into the open passenger seat. The interior smells like smoke and brand new leather, and there’s a stack of Sharpie-labeled CDs on the dashboard and a tiny glass lighthouse hanging from the rearview mirror, and Harry feels like he could just melt into the seat and live in Louis’s space forever.

 

He’s so far gone it’s disgusting.

 

“Okay,” Louis says as he starts the car, “You’re gonna give me directions, right?”

 

“Yeah,” Harry says, glancing over his shoulder as he buckles his seatbelt.

 

Zayn and Liam are still standing on the porch, looking out at the two cars in the driveway, and he feels something shift in his chest. He thinks about the still unfulfilled offers on his friend’s house, on Louis’s flat that still has rent left, the job that he still hasn’t quit and the dream that he has. He thinks of his own shitty job that’s waiting for him tomorrow morning and the untouched novel on his hard drive.

 

Everything’s still far from okay. But he feels just fine. He can picture a page turning over, a chapter ending and making way for something else, unwritten and terrifying and beautiful.

 

“Yeah,” he hears himself say again as Louis puts the car in drive, “I can get you home,”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a review, they're great things


End file.
